I 


1 
I 


ABRAHAM 
LINCOLN 


JOHN-G-NICOLAY 


EM 


ALEXANDER  GOLDSTEIN 


I 


A    SHORT    LIFE    OF 

ABRAHAM    LINCOLN 


PRESIDENT    LINCOLN    AND    HIS    SON    ''TAD." 


Copyright,  1902,  by 
THE  CENTURY  Co. 


Published  October,  1902. 


IN  MEKORIAM 


THE   DEVINNE   PRESS. 


CONTENTS 


i 

PAGE 

Ancestry  —  Thomas  Lincoln  and  Nancy  Hanks  —  Rock  Spring 
Farm  —  Lincoln's  Birth  —  Kentucky  Schools  —  The  Journey  to 
Indiana — Pigeon  Creek  Settlement  —  Indiana  Schools — Sally 
Bush  Lincoln  —  Gentryville  —  Work  and  Books  —  Satires  and 
Sermons  —  Flatboat  Voyage  to  New  Orleans  —  The  Journey  to 
Illinois 3 

II 

Flatboat  — New  Salem  — Election  Clerk— Store  and  Mill  — Kirk- 
ham's  "Grammar" — "Sangamo  Journal"  —  The  Talisman 
—  Lincoln's  Address,  March  9,  1832  —  Black  Hawk  War — 
Lincoln  Elected  Captain  —  Mustered  out  May  27,  1832 —  Re- 
enlisted  in  Independent  Spy  Battalion  —  Finally  Mustered  out, 
June  16,  1832  —  Defeated  for  the  Legislature  —  Blacksmith  or 
Lawyer?  —  The  Lincoln-Berry  Store — Appointed  Postmaster, 
May  7,  1833  —  National  Politics 21 

III 

Appointed  Deputy  Surveyor  —  Elected  to  Legislature  in  1834 — 
Campaign  Issues  —  Begins  Study  of  Law — Internal  Improve 
ment  System  —  The  Lincoln-Stone  Protest  —  Candidate  for 
Speaker  in  1838  and  1840 39 

IV 

Law  Practice  —  Rules  for  a  Lawyer  —  Law  and  Politics:  Twin 
Occupations  —  The  Springfield  Coterie  —  Friendly  Help  — 
Anne  Rutledge  —  Mary  Owens 49 


viii  CONTENTS 


v 

PAGE 

Springfield  Society — Miss  Mary  Todd  —  Lincoln's  Engagement 

—  His   Deep   Despondency  —  Visit   to    Kentucky  —  Letters    to 
Speed  —  The  Shields  Duel  — Marriage  —  Law  Partnership  with 
Logan  —  Hardin  Nominated  for  C«ngress,  1843  —  Baker  Nomi 
nated  for  Congress,  1844 — Lincoln  Nominated  and  Elected, 
1846        61 

VI 

First  Session  of  the  Thirtieth  Congress  —  Mexican  War — "Wil- 
mot  Proviso"  —  Campaign  of  1848  —  Letters  to  Herndon  about 
Young  Men  in  Politics — Speech  in  Congress  on  the  Mexican 
War — Second  Session  of  the  Thirtieth  Congress  —  Bill  to  Pro 
hibit  Slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia — Lincoln's  Recom 
mendations  of  Office- Seekers  —  Letters  to  Speed  —  Commis 
sioner  of  the  General  Land  Office  —  Declines  Governorship  of 
Oregon  76 

VII 

Repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise  —  State  Fair  Debate  —  Peoria 
Debate  —  Trumbull  Elected  —  Letter  to  Robinson — -The 
Know-Nothings  —  Decatur  Meeting  —  Bloomington  Conven 
tion —  Philadelphia  Convention  —  Lincoln's  Vote  for  Vice- 
President  —  Fremont  and  Dayton  —  Lincoln's  Campaign 
Speeches  —  Chicago  Banquet  Speech 94 

VIII 

Buchanan  Elected  President  —  The  Dred  Scott  Decision  — 
Douglas's  Springfield  Speech,  1857  —  Lincoln's  Answering 
Speech  —  Criticism  of  Dred  Scott  Decision  —  Kansas  Civil  War 

—  Buchanan  Appoints  Walker — Walker's  Letter  on  Kansas  — 
The  Lecompton  Constitution  —  Revolt  of  Douglas      ....    108 

IX 

The  Senatorial  Contest  in  Illinois — "House  Divided  against 
Itself"  Speech  —  The  Lincoln-Douglas  Debates  —  The  Free- 
port  Doctrine  —  Douglas  Deposed  from  Chairmanship  of  Com- 


CONTENTS  ix 

PAGE 

mittee  on  Territories — Benjamin  on  Douglas — Lincoln's 
Popular  Majority  —  Douglas  Gains  Legislature  —  Greeley,  Crit- 
tenden,  et  al. —  "The  Fight  Must  Go  On" — Douglas's  South 
ern  Speeches — Senator  Brown's  Questions  —  Lincoln's  Warn 
ing  against  Popular  Sovereignty  —  The  War  of  Pamphlets  — 
Lincoln's  Ohio  Speeches  —  The  John  Brown  Raid  —  Lincoln's 
Comment 118 

X 

Lincoln's  Kansas  Speeches  —  The  Cooper  Institute  Speech  — 
New  England  Speeches  —  The  Democratic  Schism  —  Senator 
Brown's  Resolutions  —  Jefferson  Davis's  Resolutions- — The 
Charleston  Convention  — Majority  and  Minority  Reports  — 
Cotton  State  Delegations  Secede  —  Charleston  Convention 
Adjourns  —  Democratic  Baltimore  Convention  Splits- — Breck- 
inridge  Nominated  —  Douglas  Nominated  —  Bell  Nominated 
by  Union  Constitutional  Convention  —  Chicago  Convention  — 
Lincoln's  Letters  to  Pickett  and  Judd  —  The  Pivotal  States  — 
Lincoln  Nominated 136 

XI 

Candidates  and  Platforms  —  The  Political  Chances — Decatur 
Lincoln  Resolution — John  Hanks  and  the  Lincoln  Rails — 
The  Rail-Splitter  Candidate  —  The  Wide- A  wakes  —  Douglas's 
Southern  Tour — Jefferson  Davis's  Address  —  Fusion  —  Lin 
coln  at  the  State  House  —  The  Election  Result 152 

XII 

Lincoln's  Cabinet  Program  —  Members  from  the  South  —  Ques 
tions  and  Answers  —  Correspondence  with  Stephens — Action 
of  Congress  —  Peace  Convention  —  Preparation  of  the  In 
augural —  Lincoln's  Farewell  Address  —  The  Journey  to  Wash 
ington —  Lincoln's  Midnight  Journey 161 

XIII 

The  Secession  Movement  —  South  Carolina  Secession  —  Buchan 
an's  Neglect  —  Disloyal  Cabinet  Members  —  Washington  Cen- 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


tral  Cabal  —  Anderson's  Transfer  to  Sumter  —  Star  of  the 
West  —  Montgomery  Rebellion  —  Davis  and  Stephens  —  Cor 
ner-stone  Theory — Lincoln  Inaugurated  —  His  Inaugural  Ad 
dress —  Lincoln's  Cabinet  —  The  Question  of  Sumter  —  Sew- 
ard's  Memorandum  —  Lincoln's  Answer  —  Bombardment  of 
Sumter — Anderson's  Capitulation 175 

XIV 

President's  Proclamation  Calling  for  Seventy-five  Regiments — 
Responses  of  the  Governors  —  Maryland  and  Virginia  —  The 
Baltimore  Riot  —  Washington  Isolated  —  Lincoln  Takes  the 
Responsibility — Robert  E.  Lee  —  Arrival  of  the  New  York 
Seventh  —  Suspension  of  Habeas  Corpus  —  The  Annapolis 
Route  —  Butler  in  Baltimore  —  Taneyon  the  Merryman  Case  — 
Kentucky  —  Missouri  —  Lyon  Captures  Camp  Jackson — Boon- 
ville  Skirmish  —  The  Missouri  Convention  —  Gamble  made 
Governor — The  Border  States 191 


XV 

Davis's  Proclamation  for  Privateers  —  Lincoln's  Proclamation  of 
Blockade  —  The  Call  for  Three  Years'  Volunteers — Southern 
Military  Preparations  —  Rebel  Capital  Moved  to  Richmond  — 
Virginia,  North  Carolina,  Tennessee,  and  Arkansas  Admitted 
to  Confederate  States  —  Desertion  of  Army  and  Navy  Officers 
—  Union  Troops  Fortify  Virginia  Shore  of  the  Potomac  —  Con 
centration  at  Harper's  Ferry — Concentration  at  Fortress  Mon 
roe  and  Cairo  —  English  Neutrality  —  Seward's  2ist-of-May 
Despatch  —  Lincoln's  Corrections  —  Preliminary  Skirmishes  — 
Forward  to  Richmond  —  Plan  of  McDowell's  Campaign  .  .  .  205 


XVI 

Congress — The  President's  Message  —  Men  and  Money  Voted 
—  The   Contraband  —  Dennison    Appoints    McClellan  —  Rich 
Mountain  —  McDowell  —  Bull    Run — Patterson's    Failure  — 
McClellan  at  Washington 217 


CONTENTS  xi 


XVII 

PAGE 

General   Scott's  Plans  —  Criticized  as    the    "Anaconda"- -The 
Three  Fields  of  Conflict — Fremont  Appointed  Major-General 

His  Military  Failures  —  Battle  of  Wilson's  Creek — Hunter 

Ordered  to  Fremont  —  Fremont's  Proclamation  —  President 
Revokes  Fremont's  Proclamation  —  Lincoln's  Letter  to  Brown 
ing Surrender  of  Lexington  —  Fremont  Takes  the  Field- 
Cameron's  Visit  to  Fremont —  Fremont's  Removal  ....  231 


XVIII 

Blockade  —  Hatteras  Inlet  — Port  Royal  Captured  — The  Trent 

Affair Lincoln  Suggests  Arbitration  —  Seward's  Despatch  — 

McClellan  at  Washington  —  Army  of  the  Potomac  —  McClel- 
lan's  Quarrel  with  Scott  —  Retirement  of  Scott  —  Lincoln's 
Memorandum  —  "All  Quiet  on  the  Potomac" — Conditions 
in  Kentucky — Cameron's  Visit  to  Sherman — East  Ten 
nessee—Instructions  to  Buell  — Buell's  Neglect  — Halleck  in 
Missouri 244 

XIX 

Lincoln  Directs  Cooperation  —  Halleck  and  Buell  —  Ulysses  S. 
Grant Grant's  Demonstration  —  Victory  at  Mill  River- 
Fort  Henry  —  Fort  Donelson  —  Buell's  Tardiness  —  Halleck's 

Activity Victory  of  Pea  Ridge  —  Halleck  Receives    General 

Command  —  Pittsburg  Landing  —  Island  No.  10  —  Halleck's 
Corinth  Campaign  — Halleck's  Mistakes 262 


XX 

The  Blockade  — Hatteras  Inlet  — Roanoke  Island  — Fort  Pulaski 
Merrimac  and  Monitor — The  Cumberland  Sunk — The  Con 
gress  Burned  — Battle  of  the  Ironclads  —  Flag-Officer  Farragut 
—  Forts  Jackson  and  St.  Philip  — New  Orleans  Captured  — 
Farragut  at  Vicksburg  —  Farragut's  Second  Expedition  to 
Vicksburg  —  Return  to  New  Orleans 277 


xii  CONTENTS 


XXI 

PAGE 

McClellan's  Illness — Lincoln  Consults  McDowell  and  Franklin  — 
President's  Plan  against  Manassas — McClellan's  Plan  against 
Richmond- — Cameron  and  Stanton  —  President's  War  Order 
No.  i — Lincoln's  Questions  to  McClellan  —  News  from  the 
West  —  Death  of  Willie  Lincoln  —  The  Harper's  Ferry  Fiasco 

—  President's  War  Order  No.  3  —  The  News  from  Hampton 
Roads  —  Manassas  Evacuated- — Movement  to  the  Peninsula — 
Yorktown  — The  Peninsula   Campaign  —  Seven  Days'    Battles 

—  Retreat  to  Harrison's  Landing        288 

XXII 

Jackson's  Valley  Campaign  —  Lincoln's  Visit  to  Scott  —  Pope 
Assigned  to  Command  —  Lee's  Attack  on  McClellan  —  Retreat 
to  Harrison's  Landing- — Seward  Sent  to  New  York — Lincoln's 
Letter  to  Seward  —  Lincoln's  Letter  to  McClellan  —  Lincoln's 
Visit  to  McClellan— Halleck  Made  General-in-Chief— Hal- 
leek's  Visit  to  McClellan  —  Withdrawal  from  Harrison's  Land 
ing —  Pope  Assumes  Command — Second  Battle  of  Bull  Run 
-The  Cabinet  Protest  — McClellan  Ordered  to  Defend  Wash 
ington —  The  Maryland  Campaign  —  Battle  of  Antietam  — 
Lincoln  visits  Antietam  —  Lincoln's  Letter  to  McClellan  — 
McClellan  Removed  from  Command 305 

XXIII 

Cameron's  Report — Lincoln's  Letter  to  Bancroft — Annual  Mes 
sage  on  Slavery  —  The  Delaware  Experiment — Joint  Resolu 
tion  on  Compensated  Abolishment — First  Border  State  Inter 
view —  Stevens's  Comment — District  of  Columbia  Abolish 
ment —  Committee  on  Abolishment— Hunter's  Order  Revoked 

—  Antislavery   Measures  of  Congress — Second   Border   State 
Interview — Emancipation  Proposed  and  Postponed  ....   320 

XXIV 

Criticism  of  the  President  for  his  Action  on  Slavery — Lincoln's 
Letters  to  Louisiana  Friends — Greeley's  Open  Letter  —  Mr. 


CONTENTS  xiii 

PAGE 

Lincoln's  Reply  —  Chicago  Clergymen  Urge  Emancipation  — 
Lincoln's  Answer  — Lincoln  Issues  Preliminary  Proclamation  — 
President  Proposes  Constitutional  Amendment  —  Cabinet  Con 
siders  Final  Proclamation  —  Cabinet  Discusses  Admission  of 
West  Virginia — Lincoln  Signs  Edict  of  Freedom  —  Lincoln's 
Letter  to  Hodges 333 

XXV 

Negro  Soldiers  —  Fort  Pillow  —  Retaliation  —  Draft — Northern 
Democrats  —  Governor  Seymour's  Attitude  —  Draft  Riots  in 
New  York — Vallandigham  —  Lincoln  on  his  Authority  to 
Suspend  Writ  of  Habeas  Corpus  —  Knights  of  the  Golden  Cir 
cle —  Jacob  Thompson  in  Canada 348 

XXVI 

Burnside  —  Fredericksburg  —  A  Tangle  of  Cross-Purposes  — 
Hooker  Succeeds  Burnside  —  Lincoln  to  Hooker — Chancel- 
lorsville — Lee's  Second  Invasion  —  Lincoln's  Criticisms  of 
"Hooker's  Plans  —  Hooker  Relieved — Meade  —  Gettysburg — 
Lee's  Retreat  —  Lincoln's  Letter  to  Meade  —  Lincoln's  Gettys 
burg  Address  —  Autumn  Strategy — The  Armies  go  into  Win 
ter  Quarters 363 

XXVII 

Buell  and  Bragg  —  Perryville  —  Rosecrans  and  Murfreesboro  — 
Grant's  Vicksburg  Experiments  —  Grant's  May  Battles — Siege 
and  Surrender  of  Vicksburg  —  Lincoln  to  Grant  —  Rosecrans's 
March  to  Chattanooga  —  Battle  of  Chickamauga— Grant  at 
Chattanooga — Battle  of  Chattanooga  —  Burnside  at  Knoxville 
— Burnside  Repulses  Longstreet  379 

XXVIII 

Grant  Lieutenant-General  —  Interview  with  Lincoln  —  Grant 
Visits  Sherman  —  Plan  of  Campaigns  — Lincoln  to  Grant  — 
From  the  Wilderness  to  Cold  Harbor  —  The  Move  to  City 
Point — Siege  of  Petersburg  —  Early  Menaces  Washington  — 
Lincoln  under  Fire  —  Sheridan  in  the  Shenandoah  Valley  .  .  393 


xiv  CONTENTS 


XXIX 

PAGE 

Sherman's  Meridian  Expedition  —  Capture  of  Atlanta — Hood 
Supersedes  Johnston  —  Hood's  Invasion  of  Tennessee  — Frank 
lin  and  Nashville  —  Sherman's  March  to  the  Sea —  Capture  of 
Savannah  —  Sherman  to  Lincoln  —  Lincoln  to  Sherman  — 
Sherman's  March  through  the  Carolinas  —  The  Burning  of 
Charleston  and  Columbia  —  Arrival  at  Goldsboro  —  Junction 
with  Schofield  —  Visit  to  Grant 405 

XXX 

Military  Governors  —  Lincoln's  Theory  of  Reconstruction  —  Con 
gressional  Election  in  Louisiana  —  Letter  to  Military  Gover 
nors  —  Letter  to  Shepley  —  Amnesty  Proclamation,  December 
8,  1863  —  Instructions  to  Banks  —  Banks's  Action  in  Louisiana 

—  Louisiana  Abolishes  Slavery  —  Arkansas  Abolishes  Slavery 

—  Reconstruction    in    Tennessee  —  Missouri    Emancipation  — 
Lincoln's    Letter    to    Drake  —  Missouri    Abolishes    Slavery  — 
Emancipation  in  Maryland  — Maryland  Abolishes  Slavery   .     .418 

XXXI 

Shaping  of  the  Presidential  Campaign  —  Criticisms  of  Mr.  Lincoln 

—  Chase's  Presidential  Ambitions  —  The  Pomeroy  Circular  — 
Cleveland  Convention  —  Attempt  to  Nominate  Grant  —  Meet 
ing  of  Baltimore  Convention  —  Lincoln's  Letter  to  Schurz  — 
Platform  of  Republican  Convention  —  Lincoln  Renominated  — 
Refuses   to  Indicate   Preference  for  Vice-President—Johnson 
Nominated  for  Vice-President—Lincoln's  Speech  to  Committee 
of  Notification— Reference  to  Mexico  in  his  Letter  of  Accept 
ance —  The  French  in  Mexico 437 

XXXII 

The  Bogus  Proclamation — The  Wade-Davis  Manifesto  —  Resig 
nation  of  Mr.  Chase— Fessenden  Succeeds  Him  — The  Greeley 
Peace  Conference — Jaquess-Gilmore  Mission  —  Letter  of  Ray 
mond—Bad  Outlook  for  the  Election— Mr.  Lincoln  on  the  Issues 


CONTENTS  xv 

I'AGE 

of  the  Campaign  — President's  Secret  Memorandum  — Meeting 
of  Democratic  National  Convention  — McClellan  Nominated— 
His  Letter  of  Acceptance  — Lincoln  Reflected— His  Speech  on 
Night  of  Election— The  Electoral  Vote  — Annual  Message  of 
December  6,  1864  —  Resignation  of  McClellan  from  the 
Army 453 

XXXIII 

The  Thirteenth  Amendment— The  President's  Speech  on  its 
Adoption— The  Two  Constitutional  Amendments  of  Lincoln's 
Term  — Lincoln  on  Peace  and  Slavery  in  his  Annual  Message 
of  December  6,  1864  — Blair's  Mexican  Project— The  Hamp 
ton  Roads  Conference 471 

XXXIV 

Blair— Chase  Chief  Justice  — Speed  Succeeds  Bates— McCulloch 
Succeeds  Fessenden  — Resignation  of  Mr.  Usher— Lincoln's 
Offer  of  $400,000,000— The  Second  Inaugural  — Lincoln's 
Literary  Rank— His  Last  Speech 487 

XXXV 

Depreciation  of  Confederate  Currency— Rigor  of  Conscription- 
Dissatisfaction  with  the  Confederate  Government— Lee  Gen 
eral-in-Chief— J.  E.  Johnston  Reappointed  to  Oppose  Sher 
man's  March — Value  of  Slave  Property  Gone  in  Richmond  — 
Davis's  Recommendation  of  Emancipation  —  Benjamin's  Last 
Despatch  to  S4idell  —  Condition  of  the  Army  when  Lee  took 
Command  — Lee  Attempts  Negotiations  with  Grant  — Lincoln's 
Directions— Lee  and  Davis  Agree  upon  Line  of  Retreat- 
Assault  on  Fort  Stedman— Five  Forks  — Evacuation  of  Peters 
burg—Surrender  of  Richmond— Pursuit  of  Lee  — Surrender  of 
Lee  —  Burning  of  Richmond  —  Lincoln  in  Richmond  ....  499 

XXXVI 

Lincoln's  Interviews  with  Campbell  —  Withdraws  Authority  for 
Meeting  of  Virginia  Legislature  — Conference  of  Davis  and 
Johnston  at  Greensboro— Johnston  Asks  for  an  Armistice— 


xvi  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Meeting  of  Sherman  and  Johnston  — Their  Agreement  — Re 
jected  at  Washington — Surrender  of  Johnston  —  Surrender  of 
other  Confederate  Forces  — End  of  the  Rebel  Navy — Capture 
of  Jefferson  Davis — Surrender  of  E.  Kirby  Smith — Number 
of  Confederates  Surrendered  and  Exchanged  —  Reduction  of 
Federal  Army  to  a  Peace  Footing— Grand  Review  of  the 
Army 519 

XXXVII 

The  I4th  of  April— Celebration  at  Fort  Sumter  — Last  Cabinet 
Meeting — Lincoln's  Attitude  toward  Threats  of  Assassination 
—  Booth's  Plot — Ford's  Theater — Fate  of  the  Assassins — The 
Mourning  Pageant 530 

XXXVIII 

Lincoln's  Early  Environment— Its  Effect  on  his  Character— His 
Attitude  toward  Slavery  and  the  Slaveholder— His  Schooling 
in  Disappointment — His  Seeming  Failures  —  His  Real  Suc 
cesses —  The  Final  Trial — His  Achievements — His  Place  in 
History 549 

Index 557 


ABRAHAM    LINCOLN 


ABRAHAM    LINCOLN 


Ancestry — Thomas  Lincoln  and  Nancy  Hanks — Rock 
Spring  Farm — Lincoln's  Birth — Kentucky  Schools — 
The  Journey  to  Indiana — Pigeon  Creek  Settlement- 
Indiana  Schools — Sally  Bush  Lincoln — Gentryville — 
Work  and  Books — Satires  and  Sermons — Flatboat  Voy 
age  to  New  Orleans — The  Journey  to  Illinois 

ABRAHAM  LINCOLN,  the  sixteenth  President  of 
JLJL  the  United  States,  was  born  in  a  log  cabin  in 
the  backwoods  of  Kentucky  on  the  I2th  day  of  Feb 
ruary,  1809.  His  father,  Thomas  Lincoln,  was  sixth 
in  direct  line  of  descent  from  Samuel  Lincoln,  who 
emigrated  from  England  to  Massachusetts  in  1638. 
Following  the  prevailing  drift  of  American  settlement, 
these  descendants  had,  during  a  century  and  a  half, 
successively  moved  from  Massachusetts  to  New  Jersey, 
from  New  Jersey  to  Pennsylvania,  from  Pennsylvania 
to  Virginia,  and  from  Virginia  to  Kentucky;  while 
collateral  branches  of  the  family  eventually  made  homes 
in  other  parts  of  the  West.  In  Pennsylvania  and  Vir 
ginia  some  of  them  had  acquired  considerable  prop 
erty  and  local  prominence. 

In  the  year  1780,  Abraham  Lincoln,  the  President's 
grandfather,  was  able  to  pay  into  the  public  treasury 
of  Virginia  "one  hundred  and  sixty  pounds,  current 
money,"  for  which  he  received  a  warrant,  directed  to 


4  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

the  "Principal  Surveyor  of  any  County  within  the 
commonwealth  of  Virginia/'  to  lay  off  in  one  or  more 
surveys  for  Abraham  Linkhorn,  his  heirs  or  assigns, 
the  quantity  of  four  hundred  acres  of  land.  The 
error  in  spelling  the  name  was  a  blunder  of  the  clerk 
who  made  out  the  warrant. 

With  this  warrant  and  his  family  of  five  children — 
Mordecai,  Josiah,  Mary,  Nancy,  and  Thomas — he 
moved  to  Kentucky,  then  still  a  county  of  Virginia,  in 
1780,  and  began  opening  a  farm.  Four  years  later, 
while  at  work  with  his  three  boys  in  the  edge  of  his 
clearing,  a  party  of  Indians,  concealed  in  the  brush, 
shot  and  killed  him.  Josiah,  the  second  son,  ran  to 
a  neighboring  fort  for  assistance;  Mordecai,  the  eld 
est,  hurried  to  the  cabin  for  his  gun,  leaving  Thomas, 
youngest  of  the  family,  a  child  of  six  years,  by  his 
father.  Mordecai  had  just  taken  down  his  rifle  from 
its  convenient  resting-place  over  the  door  of  the  cabin 
when,  turning,  he  saw  an  Indian  in  his  war-paint  stoop 
ing  to  seize  the  child.  He  took  quick  aim  through  a 
loop-hole,  shot,  and  killed  the  savage,  at  which  the 
little  boy  also  ran  to  the  house,  and  from  this  citadel 
Mordecai  continued  firing  at  the  Indians  until  Josiah 
brought  help  from  the  fort. 

It  was  doubtless  this  misfortune  which  rapidly 
changed  the  circumstances  of  the  family.1  Kentucky 
was  yet  a  wild,  new  country.  As  compared  with  later 
periods  of  emigration,  settlement  was  slow  and  pioneer 
life  a  hard  struggle.  So  it  was  probably  under  the 
stress  of  poverty,  as  well  as  by  the  marriage  of  the 
older  children,  that  the  home  was  gradually  broken 
up,  and  Thomas  Lincoln  became  "even  in  childhood 
.  .  .  a  wandering  laboring  boy,  and  grew  up  lit- 

1  By  the  law  of  primogeniture,       pealed  in  Virginia,  the  family  estate 
which  at  that  date  was  still  unre-       went  to  Mordecai,  the  eldest  son. 


THOMAS  LINCOLN  AND  NANCY  HANKS    5 

erally  without  education.  .  .  .  Before  he  was 
grown  he  passed  one  year  as  a  hired  hand  with  his 
uncle  Isaac  on  Watauga,  a  branch  of  the  Holston 
River."  Later,  he  seems  to  have  undertaken  to  learn 
the  trade  of  carpenter  in  the  shop  of  Joseph  Hanks  in 
Elizabethtown. 

When  Thomas  Lincoln  was  about  twenty-eight  years 
old  he  married  Nancy  Hanks,  a  niece  of  his  employer, 
near  Beechland,  in  Washington  County.  She  was  a 
good-looking  young  woman  of  twenty-three,  also  from 
Virginia,  and  so  far  superior  to  her  husband  in  educa 
tion  that  she  could  read  and  write,  and  taught  him 
how  to  sign  his  name.  Neither  one  of  the  young  cou 
ple  had  any  money  or  property;  but  in  those  days  liv 
ing  was  not  expensive,  and  they  doubtless  considered 
his  trade  a  sufficient  provision  for  the  future.  He 
brought  her  to  a  little  house  in  Elizabethtown,  where 
a  daughter  was  born  to  them  the  following  year. 

During  the  next  twelvemonth  Thomas  Lincoln  either 
grew  tired  of  his  carpenter  work,  or  found  the  wages 
he  was  able  to  earn  insufficient  to  meet  his  growing 
household  expenses.  He  therefore  bought  a  little  farm 
on  the  Big  South  Fork  of  Nolin  Creek,  in  what  was 
then  Hardin  and  is  now  La  Rue  County,  three  miles 
from  Hodgensville,  and  thirteen  miles  from  Elizabeth- 
town.  Having  no  means,  he  of  course  bought  the 
place  on  credit,  a  transaction  not  so  difficult  when  we 
remember  that  in  that  early  day  there  was  plenty  of 
land  to  be  bought  for  mere  promises  to  pay ;  under  the 
disadvantage,  however,  that  farms  to  be  had  on  these 
terms  were  usually  of  a  very  poor  quality,  on  which 
energetic  or  forehanded  men  did  not  care  to  waste 
their  labor.  It  was  a  kind  of  land  generally  known 
in  the  West  as  "barrens" — rolling  upland,  with  very 
thin,  unproductive  soil.  Its  momentary  usefulness  was 


6  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

that  it  was  partly  cleared  and  cultivated,  that  an  indif 
ferent  cabin  stood  on  it  ready  to  be  occupied,  and  that 
it  had  one  specially  attractive  as  well  as  useful  fea 
ture — a  fine  spring  of  water,  prettily  situated  amid  a 
graceful  clump  of  foliage,  because  of  which  the  place 
was  called  Rock  Spring  Farm.  The  change  of  abode 
was  perhaps  in  some  respects  an  improvement  upon 
Elizabethtown.  To  pioneer  families  in  deep  poverty,  a 
little  farm  offered  many  more  resources  than  a  town 
lot — space,  wood,  water,  greens  in  the  -spring,  berries 
in  the  summer,  nuts  in  the  autumn,  small  game  every 
where — and  they  were  fully  accustomed  to  the  loss  of 
companionship.  On  this  farm,  and  in  this  cabin,  the 
future  President  of  the  United  States  was  born,  on 
the  1 2th  of  February,  1809,  and  here  the  first  four 
years  of  his  childhood  were  spent. 

When  Abraham  was  about  four  years  old  the  Lin 
coln  home  was  changed  to  a  much  better  farm  of  two 
hundred  and  thirty-eight  acres  on  Knob  Creek,  six 
miles  from  Hodgensville,  bought  by  Thomas  Lincoln, 
again  on  credit,  for  the  promise  to  pay  one  hundred 
and  eighteen  pounds.  A  year  later  he  conveyed  two 
hundred  acres  of  it  by  deed  to  a  new  purchaser.  In 
this  new  home  the  family  spent  four  years  more,  and 
while  here  Abraham  and  his  sister  Sarah  began  going 
to  A  B  C  schools.  Their  first  teacher  was  Zacha- 
riah  Riney,  who  taught  near  the  Lincoln  cabin ;  the 
next,  Caleb  Hazel,  at  a  distance  of  about  four  miles. 

Thomas  Lincoln  was  evidently  one  of  those  easy 
going,  good-natured  men  who  carry  the  virtue  of  con 
tentment  to  an  extreme.  He  appears  never  to  have 
exerted  himself  much  beyond  the  attainment  of  a 
necessary  subsistence.  By  a  little  farming  and  occa 
sional  jobs  at  his  trade,  he  seems  to  have  supplied  his 
family  with  food  and  clothes.  There  is  no  record  that 


THE  JOURNEY  TO  INDIANA  7 

he  made  any  payment  on  either  of  his  farms.  The 
fever  of  westward  emigration  was  in  the  air,  and,  lis 
tening  to  glowing  accounts  of  rich  lands  and  newer 
settlements  in  Indiana,  he  had  neither  valuable  pos 
sessions  nor  cheerful  associations  to  restrain  the  nat 
ural  impulse  of  every  frontiersman  to  "move."  In 
this  determination  his  carpenter's  skill  served  him  a 
good  purpose,  and  made  the  enterprise  not  only  feas 
ible,  but  reasonably  cheap.  In  the  fall  of  1816  he 
built  himself  a  small  flat-boat,  which  he  launched  at  the 
mouth  of  Knob  Creek,  half  a  mile  from  his  cabin,  on 
the  waters  of  the  Rolling  Fork.  This  stream  would 
float  him  to  Salt  River,  and  Salt  River  to  the  Ohio. 
He  also  thought  to  combine  a  little  speculation  with 
his  undertaking.  Part  of  his  personal  property  he 
traded  for  four  hundred  gallons  of  whisky;  then,  load 
ing  the  rest  on  his  boat  with  his  carpenter's  tools  and 
the  whisky,  he  made  the  voyage,  with  the  help  of  the 
current,  down  the  Rolling  Fork  to  Salt  River,  down 
Salt  River  to  the  Ohio,  and  down  the  Ohio  to  Thomp 
son's  Ferry,  in  Perry  County,  on  the  Indiana  shore. 
The  boat  capsized  once  on  the  way,  but  he  saved  most 
of  the  cargo. 

Sixteen  miles  out  from  the  river  he  found  a  location 
in  the  forest  which  suited  him.  Since  his  boat  would 
not  float  up-stream,  he  sold  it,  left  his  property  with  a 
settler,  and  trudged  back  home  to  Kentucky,  all  the  way 
on  foot,  to  bring  his  wife  and  the  two  children — Sarah, 
nine  years  old,  and  Abraham,  seven.  Another  son 
had  been  born  to  them  some  years  before,  but  had  died 
when  only  three  days  old.  This  time  the  trip  to  In 
diana  was  made  with  the  aid  of  two  horses,  used  by 
the  wife  and  children  for  riding  and  to  carry  their 
little  equipage  for  camping  at  night  by  the  way.  In 
a  straight  line,  the  distance  is  about  fifty  miles;  but 


8  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

it  was  probably  doubled  by  the  very  few  roads  it  was 
possible  to  follow. 

Having  reached  the  Ohio  and  crossed  to  where  he 
had  left  his  goods  on  the  Indiana  side,  he  hired  a 
wagon,  which  carried  them  and  his  family  the  remain 
ing  sixteen  miles  through  the  forest  to  the  spot  he  had 
chosen,  which  in  due  time  became  the  Lincoln  farm. 
It  was  a  piece  of  heavily  timbered  land,  one  and  a 
half  miles  east  of  what  has  since  become  the  village 
of  Gentryville,  in  Spencer  County.  The  lateness  of 
the  autumn  compelled  him  to  provide  a  shelter  as 
quickly  as  possible,  and  he  built  what  is  known  on 
the  frontier  as  a  half- faced  camp,  about  fourteen  feet 
square.  This  structure  differed  from  a  cabin  in  that 
it  was  closed  on  only  three  sides,  and  open  to  the 
weather  on  the  fourth.  It  was  usual  to  build  the  fire 
in  front  of  the  open  side,  and  the  necessity  of  provid 
ing  a  chimney  was  thus  avoided.  He  doubtless  in 
tended  it  for  a  mere  temporary  shelter,  and  as  such 
it  would  have  sufficed  for  good  weather  in  the  sum 
mer  season.  But  it  was  a  rude  provision  for  the  winds 
and  snows  of  an  Indiana  winter.  It  illustrates  Thomas 
Lincoln's  want  of  energy,  that  the  family  remained 
housed  in  this  primitive  camp  for  nearly  a  whole  year. 
He  must,  however,  not  be  too  hastily  blamed  for  his 
dilatory  improvement.  It  is  not  likely  that  he  re 
mained  altogether  idle.  A  more  substantial  cabin  was 
probably  begun,  and,  besides,  there  was  the  heavy  work 
of  clearing  away  the  timber — that  is,  cutting  down  the 
large  trees,  chopping  them  into  suitable  lengths,  and 
rolling  them  together  into  great  log-heaps  to  be  burned, 
or  splitting  them  into  rails  to  fence  the  small  field  upon 
which  he  managed  to  raise  a  patch  of  corn  and  other 
things  during  the  ensuing  summer. 

Thomas   Lincoln's   arrival   was   in   the   autumn   of 


GENTRYVILLE  9 

1816.  That  same  winter  Indiana  was  admitted  to  the 
Union  as  a  State.  There  were  as  yet  no  roads  worthy 
of  the  name  to  or  from  the  settlement  formed  by  him 
self  and  seven  or  eight  neighbors  at  various  distances. 
The  village  of  Gentryville  was  not  even  begun.  There 
was  no  sawmill  to  saw  lumber.  Breadstuff  could 
be  had  only  by  sending  young  Abraham,  on  horseback, 
seven  miles,  with  a  bag  of  corn  to  be  ground  on  a 
hand  grist-mill.  In  the  course  of  two  or  three  years 
a  road  from  Corydon  to  Evansville  was  laid  out,  run 
ning  past  the  Lincoln  farm;  and  perhaps  two  or  three 
years  afterward  another  from  Rockport  to  Blooming- 
ton,  crossing  the  former.  This  gave  rise  to  Gentry 
ville.  James  Gentry  entered  the  land  at  the  cross 
roads.  Gideon  Romine  opened  a  small  store,  and  their 
joint  efforts  succeeded  in  getting  a  post-office  estab 
lished,  from  which  the  village  gradually  grew.  For 
a  year  after  his  arrival  Thomas  Lincoln  remained  a 
mere  squatter.  Then  he  entered  the  quarter-section 
(one  hundred  and  sixty  acres)  on  which  he  opened 
his  farm,  and  made  some  payments  on  his  entry,  but 
only  enough  in  eleven  years  to  obtain  a  patent  for 
one  half  of  it. 

About  the  time  that  he  moved  into  his  new  cabin, 
relatives  and  friends  followed  from  Kentucky,  and 
some  of  them  in  turn  occupied  the  half-faced  camp. 
In  the  ensuing  autumn  much  sickness  prevailed  in  the 
Pigeon  Creek  settlement.  It  was  thirty  miles  to  the 
nearest  doctor,  and  several  persons  died,  among  them 
Nancy  Hanks  Lincoln,  the  mother  of  young  Abraham. 
The  mechanical  skill  of  Thomas  was  called  upon  to 
make  the  coffins,  the  necessary  lumber  for  which  had 
to  be  cut  with  a  whip-saw. 

The  death  of  Mrs.  Lincoln  was  a  serious  loss  to  her 
husband  and  children.  Abraham's  sister  Sarah  was 


io  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

only  eleven  years  old,  and  the  tasks  and  cares  of  the 
little  household  were  altogether  too  heavy  for  her 
years  and  experience.  Nevertheless,  they  struggled  on 
bravely  through  the  winter  and  next  summer,  but  in 
the  autumn  of  1819  Thomas  Lincoln  went  back  to 
Kentucky  and  married  Sally  Bush  Johnston,  whom  he 
had  known  and,  it  is  said,  courted  when  she  was  merely 
Sally  Bush.  Johnston,  to  whom  she  was  married  about 
the  time  Lincoln  married  Nancy  Hanks,  had  died, 
leaving  her  with  three  children.  She  came  of  a  better 
station  in  life  than  Thomas,  and  is  represented  as  a 
woman  of  uncommon  energy  and  thrift,  possessing 
excellent  qualities  both  of  head  and  heart.  The  house 
hold  goods  which  she  brought  to  the  Lincoln  home  in 
Indiana  filled  a  four-horse  wagon.  Not  only  were  her 
own  three  children  well  clothed  and  cared  for,  but  she 
was  able  at  once  to  provide  little  Abraham  and  Sarah 
with  home  comforts  to  which  they  had  been  strangers 
during  the  whole  of  their  young  lives.  Under  her 
example  and  urging,  Thomas  at  once  supplied  the  yet 
unfinished  cabin  with  floor,  door,  and  windows,  and 
existence  took  on  a  new  aspect  for  all  the  inmates. 
Under  her  management  and  control,  all  friction  and 
jealousy  was  avoided  between  the  two  sets  of  children, 
and  contentment,  if  not  happiness,  reigned  in  the  little 
cabin. 

The  new  stepmother  quickly  perceived  the  superior 
aptitudes  and  abilities  of  Abraham.  She  became  very 
fond  of  him,  and  in  every  way  encouraged  his  marked 
inclination  to  study  and  improve  himself.  The  op 
portunities  for  this  were  meager  enough.  Mr.  Lincoln 
himself  has  drawn  a  vivid  outline  of  the  situation : 

"It  was  a  wild  region,  with  many  bears  and  other 
wild  animals  still  in  the  woods.  There  I  grew  up. 
There  were  some  schools  so  called,  but  no  qualifica- 


FRONTIER    SCHOOLS  u 

tion  was  ever  required  of  a  teacher  beyond  readin', 
writin',  and  cipherin'  to  the  Rule  of  Three.  If  a  strag 
gler  supposed  to  understand  Latin  happened  to  so 
journ  in  the  neighborhood,  he  was  looked  upon  as  a 
wizard.  There  was  absolutely  nothing  to  excite  am 
bition  for  education." 

As  Abraham  was  only  in  his  eighth  year  when  he 
left  Kentucky,  the  little  beginnings  he  had  learned  in 
the  schools  kept  by  Riney  and  Hazel  in  that  State  must 
have  been  very  slight — probably  only  his  alphabet,  or 
possibly  three  or  four  pages  of  Webster's  "Elementary 
Spelling  Book."  It  is  likely  that  the  multiplication 
table  was  as  yet  an  un fathomed  mystery,  and  that  he 
could  not  write  or  read  more  than  the  words  he  spelled. 
There  is  no  record  at  what  date  he  was  able  again  to 
go  to  school  in  Indiana.  Some  of  his  schoolmates 
think  it  was  in  his  tenth  year,  or  soon  after  he  fell 
under  the  care  of  his  stepmother.  The  school-house 
was  a  low  cabin  of  round  logs,  a  mile  and  a  half  from 
the  Lincoln  home,  with  split  logs  or  "puncheons"  for 
a  floor,  split  logs  roughly  leveled  with  an  ax  and  set 
up  on  legs  for  benches,  and  a  log  cut  out  of  one  end 
and  the  space  filled  in  with  squares  of  greased  paper 
for  window  panes.  The  main  light  in  such  primitive 
halls  of  learning  was  admitted  by  the  open  door.  It 
was  a  type  of  school  building  common  in  the  early 
West,  in  which  many  a  statesman  gained  the  first  rudi 
ments  of  knowledge.  Very  often  Webster's  "Elemen 
tary  Spelling  Book"  was  the  only  text-book.  Abra 
ham's  first  Indiana  school  was  probably  held  five  years 
before  Gentryville  was  located  and  a  store  established 
there.  Until  then  it  was  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to 
obtain  books,  slates,  pencils,  pen,  ink,  and  paper,  and 
their  use  was  limited  to  settlers  who  had  brought  them 
when  they  came.  It  is  reasonable  to  infer  that  the 


12  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Lincoln  family  had  no  such  luxuries,  and,  as  the  Pig 
eon  Creek  settlement  numbered  only  eight  or  ten  fami 
lies,  there  must  have  been  very  few  pupils  to  attend  this 
first  school.  Nevertheless,  it  is  worthy  of  special  note 
that  even  under  such  difficulties  and  limitations,  the 
American  thirst  for  education  planted  a  school-house 
on  the  very  forefront  of  every  settlement. 

Abraham's  second  school  in  Indiana  was  held  about 
the  time  he  was  fourteen  years  old,  and  the  third  in  his 
seventeenth  year.  By  this  time  he  probably  had  better 
teachers  and  increased  facilities,  though  with  the  dis 
advantage  of  having  to  walk  four  or  five  miles  to  the 
school-house.  He  learned  to  write,  and  was  provided 
with  pen,  ink,  and  a  copy-book,  and  probably  a  very 
limited  supply  of  writing-paper,  for  facsimiles  have 
been  printed  of  several  scraps  and  fragments  upon 
which  he  had  carefully  copied  tables,  rules,  and  sums 
from  his  arithmetic,  such  as  those  of  long  measure, 
land  measure,  and  dry  measure,  and  examples  in  mul 
tiplication  and  compound  division.  All  this  indicates 
that  he  pursued  his  studies  with  a  very  unusual  pur 
pose  and  determination,  not  only  to  understand  them 
at  the  moment,  but  to  imprint  them  indelibly  upon  his 
memory,  and  even  to  retain  them  in  visible  form  for 
reference  when  the  school-book  might  no  longer  be  in 
his  hands  or  possession. 

Mr.  Lincoln  has  himself  written  that  these  three 
different  schools  were  "kept  successively  by  Andrew 

Crawford,  Swaney,  and  Azel  W.  Dorsey." 

Other  witnesses  state  the  succession  somewhat  differ 
ently.  The  important  fact  to  be  gleaned  from  what  we 
learn  about  Mr.  Lincoln's  schooling  is  that  the  instruc 
tion  given  him  by  these  five  different  teachers — two 
in  Kentucky  and  three  in  Indiana,  in  short  sessions  of 
attendance  scattered  over  a  period  of  nine  years — 


WORK   AND   BOOKS  13 

made  up  in  all  less  than  a  twelvemonth.  He  said  of 
it  in  1860,  "Abraham  now  thinks  that  the  aggre 
gate  of  all  his  schooling  did  not  amount  to  one  year." 
This  distribution  of  the  tuition  he  received  was  doubt 
less  an  advantage.  Had  it  all  been  given  him  at  his 
first  school  in  Indiana,  it  would  probably  not  have  car 
ried  him  half  through  Webster's  "Elementary  Spell 
ing  Book."  The  lazy  or  indifferent  pupils  who  were 
his  schoolmates  doubtless  forgot  what  was  taught  them 
at  one  time  before  they  had  opportunity  at  another ;  but 
to  the  exceptional  character  of  Abraham,  these  widely 
separated  fragments  of  instruction  were  precious  steps 
to  self-help,  of  which  he  made  unremitting  use. 

It  is  the  concurrent  testimony  of  his  early  compan 
ions  that  he  employed  all  his  spare  moments  in  keeping 
on  with  some  one  of  his  studies.  His  stepmother  says : 
"Abe  read  diligently.  .  .  .  He  read  every  book 
he  could  lay  his  hands  on;  and  when  he  came  across 
a  passage  that  struck  him,  he  would  write  it  down  on 
boards,  if  he  had  no  paper,  and  keep  it  there  until  he 
did  get  paper.  Then  he  would  rewrite  it,  look  at  it, 
repeat  it.  He  had  a  copy-book,  a  kind  of  scrap-book, 
in  which  he  put  down  all  things,  and  thus  preserved 
them."  There  is  no  mention  that  either  he  or  other 
pupils  had  slates  and  slate-pencils  to  use  at  school  or 
at  home,  but  he  found  a  ready  substitute  in  pieces 
of  board.  It  is  stated  that  he  occupied  his  long  even 
ings  at  home  doing  sums  on  the  fire-shovel.  Iron  fire- 
shovels  were  a  rarity  among  pioneers;  they  used,  in 
stead,  a  broad,  thin  clapboard  with  one  end  narrowed 
to  a  handle.  In  cooking  by  the  open  fire,  this  domestic 
implement  was  of  the  first  necessity  to  arrange  piles 
of  live  coals  on  the  hearth,  over  which  they  set  their 
"skillet"  and  "oven,"  upon  the  lids  of  which  live  coals 
were  also  heaped. 


H  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Upon  such  a  wooden  shovel  Abraham  was  able  to 
work  his  sums  by  the  flickering  firelight.  If  he  had 
no  pencil,  he  could  use  charcoal,  and  probably  did  so. 
When  it  was  covered  with  figures  he  would  take  a 
drawing-knife,  shave  it  off  clean,  and  begin  again. 
Under  these  various  disadvantages,  and  by  the  help 
of  such  troublesome  expedients,  Abraham  Lincoln 
worked  his  way  to  so  much  of  an  education  as  placed 
him  far  ahead  of  his  schoolmates,  and  quickly  abreast 
of  the  acquirements  of  his  various  teachers.  The  field 
from  which  he  could  glean  knowledge  was  very  lim 
ited,  though  he  diligently  borrowed  every  book  in  the 
neighborhood.  The  list  is  a  short  one — "Robinson 
Crusoe,"  ^Esop's  "Fables,"  Bunyan's  "Pilgrim's  Prog 
ress,"  Weems's  "Life  of  Washington,"  and  a  "History 
of  the  United  States."  When  he  had  exhausted  other 
books,  he  even  resolutely  attacked  the  Revised  Statutes 
of  Indiana,  which  Dave  Turnham,  the  constable,  had 
in  daily  use  and  permitted  him  to  come  to  his  house 
and  read. 

It  needs  to  be  borne  in  mind  that  all  this  effort  at 
self-education  extended  from  first  to  last  over  a  period 
of  twelve  or  thirteen  years,  during  which  he  was  also 
performing  hard  manual  labor,  and  proves  a  degree 
of  steady,  unflinching  perseverance  in  a  line  of  con 
duct  that  brings  into  strong  relief  a  high  aim  and  the 
consciousness  of  abundant  intellectual  power.  He  was 
not.  permitted  to  forget  that  he  was  on  an  uphill  path, 
a  stern  struggle  with  adversity.  The  leisure  hours 
which  he  was  able  to  devote  to  his  reading,  his  penman 
ship,  and  his  arithmetic  were  by  no  means  overabun 
dant.  Writing  of  his  father's  removal  from  Kentucky 
to  Indiana,  he  says : 

"He  settled  in  an  unbroken  forest,  and  the  clearing 
away  of  surplus  wood  was  the  great  task  ahead.  Abra- 


FARM  WORK  15 

ham,  though  very  young,  was  large  of  his  age,  and 
had  an  ax  put  into  his  hands  at  once;  and  from  that 
till  within  his  twenty-third  year  he  was  almost  con 
stantly  handling  that  most  useful  instrument — less,  of 
course,  in  plowing  and  harvesting  seasons." 

John  Hanks  mentions  the  character  of  his  work  a 
little  more  in  detail.  "He  and  I  worked  barefoot, 
grubbed  it,  plowed,  mowed,  and  cradled  together; 
plowed  corn,  gathered  it,  and  shucked  corn."  The 
sum  of  it  all  is  that  from  his  boyhood  until  after  he 
was  of  age,  most  of  his  time  was  spent  in  the  hard 
and  varied  muscular  labor  of  the  farm  and  the  forest, 
sometimes  on  his  father's  place,  sometimes  as  a  hired 
hand  for  other  pioneers.  In  this  very  useful  but  com 
monplace  occupation  he  had,  however,  one  advantage. 
He  was  not  only  very  early  in  his  life  a  tall,  strong 
country  boy,  but  as  he  grew  up  he  soon  became  a  tall, 
strong,  sinewy  man.  He  early  attained  the  unusual 
height  of  six  feet  four  inches,  with  arms  of  propor 
tionate  length.  This  gave  him  a  degree  of  power  and 
facility  as  an  ax-man  which  few  had  or  were  able  to 
acquire.  He  was  therefore  usually  able  to  lead  his 
fellows  in  efforts  of  both  muscle  and  mind.  He  per 
formed  the  tasks  of  his  daily  labor  and  mastered  the 
lessons  of  his  scanty'schooling  with  an  ease  and  rapidity 
they  were  unable  to  attain. 

Twice  during  his  life  in  Indiana  this  ordinary  rou 
tine  was  somewhat  varied.  When  he  was  sixteen, 
while  working  for  a  man  who  lived  at  the  mouth  of 
Anderson's  Creek,  it  was  part  of  his  duty  to  manage 
a  ferry-boat  which  transported  passengers  across  the 
Ohio  River.  It  was  doubtless-  this  which  three  years 
later  brought  him  a  new  experience,  that  he  himself 
related  in  these  words : 

"When  he  was  nineteen,  still  residing  in  Indiana,  he 


1 6  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

made  his  first  trip  upon  a  flatboat  to  New  Orleans. 
He  was  a  hired  hand  merely,  and  he  and  a  son  of  the 
owner,  without  other  assistance,  made  the  trip.  The 
nature  of  part  of  the  'cargo  load,'  as  it  was  called, 
made  it  necessary  for  them  to  linger  and  trade  along 
the  sugar-coast,  and  one  night  they  were  attacked  by 
seven  negroes  with  intent  to  kill  and  rob  them.  They 
were  hurt  some  in  the  melee,  but  succeeded  in  driving 
the  negroes  from  the  boat,  and  then  'cut  cable,'  'weighed 
anchor,'  and  left." 

This  commercial  enterprise  was  set  on  foot  by  Mr. 
Gentry,  the  founder  of  Gentryville.  The  affair  shows 
us  that  Abraham  had  gained  an  enviable  standing  in 
the  village  as  a  man  of  honesty,  skill,  and  judgment — 
one  who  could  be  depended  on  to  meet  such  emer 
gencies  as  might  arise  in  selling  their  bacon  and  other 
produce  to  the  cotton-planters  along  the  shores  of  the 
lower  Mississippi. 

By  this  time  Abraham's  education  was  well  ad 
vanced.  His  handwriting,  his  arithmetic,  and  his  gen 
eral  intelligence  were  so  good  that  he  had  occasionally 
been  employed  to  help  in  the  Gentryville  store,  and 
Gentry  thus  knew  by  personal  test  that  he  was  entirely 
capable  of  assisting  his  son  Allen  in  the  trading  expe 
dition  to  New  Orleans.  For  Abraham,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  was  an  event  which  must  have  opened  up 
wide  vistas  of  future  hope  and  ambition.  Allen  Gen 
try  probably  was  nominal  supercargo  and  steersman, 
but  we  may  easily  surmise  that  Lincoln,  as  the  "bow 
oar,"  carried  his  full  half  of  general  responsibility. 
For  this  service  the  elder  Gentry  paid  him  eight  dol 
lars  a  month  and  his  passage  home  on  a  steamboat. 
It  was  the  future  President's  first  eager  look  into  the 
wide,  wide  world. 

Abraham's   devotion   to   his   books   and   his   sums 


INDIANA  HUNTERS  17 

stands  forth  in  more  striking  light  from  the  fact  that 
his  habits  differed  from  those  of  most  frontier  boys  in 
one  important  particular.  Almost  every  youth  of  the 
backwoods  early  became  a  habitual  hunter  and  supe 
rior  marksman.  The  Indiana  woods  were  yet  swarm 
ing  with  game,  and  the  larder  of  every  cabin  depended 
largely  upon  this  great  storehouse  of  wild  meat.1  The 
Pigeon  Creek  settlement  was  especially  fortunate  on 
this  point.  There  was  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  Lin 
coln  home  what  was  known  in  the  West  as  a  deer-lick 
—that  is,  there  existed  a  feeble  salt-spring,  which  im 
pregnated  the  soil  in  its  vicinity  or  created  little  pools 
of  brackish  water — and  various  kinds  of  animals,  par 
ticularly  deer,  resorted  there  to  satisfy  their  natural 
craving  for  salt  by  drinking  from  these  or  licking  the 
moist  earth.  Hunters  took  advantage  of  this  habit, 
and  one  of  their  common  customs  was  to  watch  in  the 
dusk  or  at  night,  and  secure  their  approaching  prey 
by  an  easy  shot.  Skill  with  the  rifle  and  success  in 
the  chase  were  points  of  friendly  emulation.  In  many 
localities  the  boy  or  youth  who  shot  a  squirrel  in  any 
part  of  the  animal  except  its  head  became  the  butt  of 
the  jests  of  his  companions  and  elders.  Yet,  under 
such  conditions  and  opportunities  Abraham  was  neither 
a  hunter  nor  a  marksman.  He  tells  us : 

"A  few  days  before  the  completion  of  his  eighth 
year,  in  the  absence  of  his  father,  a  flock  of  wild  tur 
keys  approached  the  new  log  cabin,  and  Abraham, 
with  a  rifle  gun,  standing  inside,  shot  through  a  crack 


l  Franklin  points  out  how  much  to  afford  freedom  and  subsistence 

this  resource  of  the  early  Americans  to  any  man  who  can  bait  a  hook  or 

contributed  to  their  spirit  of  inde-  pull  a  trigger." 
pendence  by  saying:  (See  "  The  Century  Magazine," 

"I    can   retire    cheerfully  with  "  Franklin  as  a  Diplomatist,"  Octo- 

my  little  family  into  the  boundless  ber,  1899,  p.  888.) 
woods  of  America,  which  are  sure 
2 


1 8  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

and  killed  one  of  them.  He  has  never  since  pulled  a 
trigger  on  any  larger  game." 

The  hours  which  other  boys  spent  in  roaming  the 
woods  or  lying  in  ambush  at  the  deer-lick,  he  preferred 
to  devote  to  his  effort  at  mental  improvement.  It  can 
hardly  be  claimed  that  he  did  this  from  calculating  am 
bition.  It  was  a  native  intellectual  thirst,  the  signifi 
cance  of  which  he  did  not  himself  yet  understand. 
Such  exceptional  characteristics  manifested  themselves 
only  in  a  few  matters.  In  most  particulars  he  grew 
up  as  the  ordinary  backwoods  boy  develops  into  the 
youth  and  man.  As  he  was  subjected  to  their  usual 
labors,  so  also  he  was  limited  to  their  usual  pastimes 
and  enjoyments. 

The  varied  amusements  common  to  our  day  were 
not  within  their  reach.  The  period  of  the  circus,  the 
political  speech,  and  the  itinerant  show  had  not  yet 
come.  Schools,  as  we  have  seen,  and  probably  meet 
ings  or  church  services,  were  irregular,  to  be  had  only 
at  long  intervals.  Primitive  athletic  games  and  com 
monplace  talk,  enlivened  by  frontier  jests  and  stories, 
formed  the  sum  of  social  intercourse  when  half  a  dozen 
or  a  score  of  settlers  of  various  ages  came  together  at 
a  house-raising  or  corn-husking,  or  when  mere  chance 
brought  them  at  the  same  time  to  the  post-office  or 
the  country  store.  On  these  occasions,  however,  Abra 
ham  was,  according  to  his  age,  always  able  to  con 
tribute  his  full  share  or  more.  Most  of  his  natural 
aptitudes  equipped  him  especially  to  play  his  part  well. 
He  had  quick  intelligence,  ready  sympathy,  a  cheerful 
temperament,  a  kindling  humor,  a  generous  and  help 
ful  spirit.  He  was  both  a  ready  talker  and  apprecia 
tive  listener.  By  virtue  of  his  tall  stature  and  unusual 
strength  of  sinew  and  muscle,  he  was  from  the  begin 
ning  a  leader  in  all  athletic  games;  by  reason  of  his 


SATIRES   AND   SERMONS  19 

studious  habits  and  his  extraordinarily  retentive  mem 
ory,  he  quickly  became  the  best  story-teller  among  his 
companions.  Even  the  slight  training  he  gained  from 
his  studies  greatly  quickened  his  perceptions  and  broad 
ened  and  steadied  the  strong  reasoning  faculty  with 
which  nature  had  endowed  him. 

As  the  years  of  his  youth  passed  by,  his  less  gifted 
comrades  learned  to  accept  his  judgments  and  to  wel 
come  his  power  to  entertain  and  instruct  them.  On 
his  own  part,  he  gradually  learned  to  write  not  merely 
with  the  hand,  but  also  with  the  mind — to  think.  It 
was  an  easy  transition  for  him  from  remembering  the 
jingle  of  a  commonplace  rhyme  to  the  constructing  of 
a  doggerel  verse,  and  he  did  not  neglect  the  oppor 
tunity  of  practising  his  penmanship  in  such  im 
promptus.  Tradition  also  relates  that  he  added  to  his 
list  of  stories  and  jokes  humorous  imitations  from  the 
sermons  of  eccentric  preachers.  But  tradition  has  very 
likely  both  magnified  and  distorted  these  alleged  ex 
ploits  of  his  satire  and  mimicry.  All  that  can  be  said 
of  them  is  that  his  youth  was  marked  by  intellectual 
activity  far  beyond  that  of  his  companions. 

It  is  an  interesting  coincidence  that  nine  days  before 
the  birth  of  Abraham  Lincoln  Congress  passed  the  act 
to  organize  the  Territory  of  Illinois,  which  his  future 
life  and  career  were  destined  to  render  so  illustrious. 
Another  interesting  coincidence  may  be  found  in  the 
fact  that  in  the  same  year  (1818)  in  which  Congress 
definitely  fixed  the  number  of  stars  and  stripes  in  the 
national  flag,  Illinois  was  admitted  as  a  State  to  the 
Union.  The  Star  of  Empire  was  moving  westward  at 
an  accelerating  speed.  Alabama  was  admitted  in  1819, 
Maine  in  1820,  Missouri  in  1821.  Little  by  little  the 
line  of  frontier  settlement  was  pushing  itself  toward 
the  Mississippi.  No  sooner  had  the  pioneer  built  him 


20  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

a  cabin  and  opened  his  little  farm,  than  during  every 
summer  canvas-covered  wagons  wound  their  toilsome 
way  over  the  new-made  roads  into  the  newer  wilder 
ness,  while  his  eyes  followed  them  with  wistful  eager 
ness.  Thomas  Lincoln  and  his  Pigeon  Creek  relatives 
and  neighbors  could  not  forever  withstand  the  conta 
gion  of  this  example,  and  at  length  they  yielded  to 
the  irrepressible  longing  by  a  common  impulse.  Mr. 
Lincoln  writes : 

"March  i,  1830,  Abraham  having  just  completed  his 
twenty-first  year,  his  father  and  family,  with  the  fami 
lies  of  the  two  daughters  and  sons-in-law  of  his  step 
mother,  left  the  old  homestead  in  Indiana  and  came  to 
Illinois.  Their  mode  of  conveyance  was  wagons  drawn 
by  ox-teams,  and  Abraham  drove  one  of  the  teams. 
They  reached  the  county  of  Macon,  and  stopped  there 
some  time  within  the  same  month  of  March.  His 
father  and  family  settled  a  new  place  on  the  north  side 
of  the  Sangamon  River,  at  the  junction  of  the  timber 
land  and  prairie,  about  ten  miles  westerly  from  De- 
catur.  Here  they  built  a  log  cabin,  into  which  they 
removed,  and  made  sufficient  of  rails  to  fence  ten 
acres  of  ground,  fenced  and  broke  the  ground,  and 
raised  a  crop  of  sown  corn  upon  it  the  same  year. 
.  The  sons-in-law  were  temporarily  settled  in 
other  places  in  the  county.  In  the  autumn  all  hands 
were  greatly  afflicted  with  ague  and  fever,  to  which 
they  had  not  been  used,  and  by  which  they  were  greatly 
discouraged,  so  much  so  that  they  determined  on  leav 
ing  the  county.  They  remained,  however,  through  the 
succeeding  winter,  which  was  the  winter  of  the  very 
celebrated  'deep  snow'  of  Illinois. " 


II 


Flatboat — New  Salem — Election  Clerk — Store  and  Mill 
— Kirkham's  "Grammar" — "Sangamo  Journal" — The 
Talisman — Lincoln's  Address,  March  p,  1832 — Black 
Hawk  War — Lincoln  Elected  Captain — Mustered  out 
May  27, 1832 — Rccnlisted  in  Independent  Spy  Battalion 
— Finally  Mustered  out,  June  16,  1832 — Defeated  for 
the  Legislature — Blacksmith  or  Lawyer? — The  Lin 
coln-Berry  Store — Appointed  Postmaster,  May  7,  i#jj 
— National  Politics 

THE  life  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  or  that  part  of  it 
which  will  interest  readers  for  all  future  time, 
properly  begins  in  March,  1831,  after  the  winter  of 
the  "deep  snow."  According  to  frontier  custom,  being 
then  twenty-one  years  old,  he  left  his  father's  cabin 
to  make  his  own  fortune  in  the  world.  A  man  named 
Denton  Offutt,  one  of  a  class  of  local  traders  and 
speculators  usually  found  about  early  Western  settle 
ments,  had  probably  heard  something  of  young  Lin 
coln's  Indiana  history,  particularly  that  he  had  made 
a  voyage  on  a  flatboat  from  Indiana  to  New  Orleans, 
and  that  he  was  strong,  active,  honest,  and  generally, 
as  would  be  expressed  in  Western  phrase,  "a  smart 
young  fellow."  He  was  therefore  just  the  sort  of 
man  Offutt  needed  for  one  of  his  trading  enterprises, 
and  Mr.  Lincoln  himself  relates  somewhat  in  detail 
how  Offutt  engaged  him  and  the  beginning  of  the 
venture : 

" Abraham,  together  with  his  stepmother's  son,  John 

21 


22  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

D.  Johnston,  and  John  Hanks,  yet  residing  in  Macon 
County,  hired  themselves  to  Denton  Offutt  to  take  a 
flatboat  from  Beardstown,  Illinois  [on  the  Illinois 
River],  to  New  Orleans;  and  for  that  purpose  were 
to  join  him — Offutt — at  Springfield,  Illinois,  so  soon 
as  the  snow  should  go  off.  When  it  did  go  off,  which 
was  about  the  first  of  March,  1831,  the  county  was 
so  flooded  as  to  make  traveling  by  land  impracticable, 
to  obviate  which  difficulty  they  purchased  a  large 
canoe,  and  came  down  the  Sangamon  River  in  it.  This 
is  the  time  and  the  manner  of  Abraham's  first  entrance 
into  Sangamon  County.  They  found  Offutt  at  Spring 
field,  but  learned  from  him  that  he  had  failed  in  getting 
a  boat  at  Beardstown.  This  led  to  their  hiring  them 
selves  to  him  for  twelve  dollars  per  month  each,  and 
getting  the  timber  out  of  the  trees  and  building  a  boat 
at  Old  Sangamon  town  on  the  Sangamon  River,  seven 
miles  northwest  of  Springfield,  which  boat  they  took 
to  New  Orleans,  substantially  upon  the  old  contract." 

It  needs  here  to  be  recalled  that  Lincoln's  father  was 
a  carpenter,  and  that  Abraham  had  no  doubt  acquired 
considerable  skill  in  the  use  of  tools  during  his  boy 
hood,  and  a  practical  knowledge  of  the  construction 
of  flatboats  during  his  previous  New  Orleans  trip,  suf 
ficient  to  enable  him  with  confidence  to  undertake  this 
task  in  shipbuilding.  From  the  after  history  of  both 
Johnston  and  Hanks,  we  know  that  neither  of  them 
was  gifted  with  skill  or  industry,  and  it  becomes  clear 
that  Lincoln  was  from  the  first  leader  of  the  party, 
master  of  construction,  and  captain  of  the  craft. 

It  took  some  time  to  build  the  boat,  and  before  it 
was  finished  the  Sangamon  River  had  fallen  so  that 
the  new  craft  stuck  midway  across  the  dam  at  Rut- 
ledge's  Mill,  at  New  Salem,  a  village  of  fifteen  or 
twenty  houses.  The  inhabitants  came  down  to  the 


ELECTION  CLERK  23 

bank,  and  exhibited  great  interest  in  the  fate  of  the 
boat,  which,  with  its  bow  in  the  air  and  its  stern  under 
water,  was  half  bird  and  half  fish,  and  they  probably 
jestingly  inquired  of  the  young  captain  whether  he 
expected  to  dive  or  to  fly  to  New  Orleans.  He  was, 
however,  equal  to  the  occasion.  He  bored  a  hole  in  the 
bottom  of  the  boat  at  the  bow,  and  rigged  some  sort 
of  lever  or  derrick  to  lift  the  stern,  so  that  the  water 
she  had  taken  in  behind  ran  out  in  front,  enabling  her 
to  float  over  the  partly  submerged  dam ;  and  this  feat, 
in  turn,  caused  great  wonderment  in  the  crowd  at  the 
novel  expedient  of  bailing  a  boat  by  boring  a  hole  in 
her  bottom. 

This  exploit  of  naval  engineering  fully  established 
Lincoln's  fame  at  New  Salem,  and  grounded  him  so 
firmly  in  the  esteem  of  his  employer  Offutt  that  the 
latter,  already  looking  forward  to  his  future  useful 
ness,  at  once  engaged  him  to  come  back  to  New  Salem, 
after  his  New  Orleans  voyage,  to  act  as  his  clerk  in 
a  store. 

Once  over  the  dam  and  her  cargo  reloaded,  partly 
there  and  partly  at  Beardstown,  the  boat  safely  made 
the  remainder  of  her  voyage  to  New  Orleans ;  and,  re 
turning  by  steamer  to  St.  Louis,  Lincoln  and  Johnston 
(Hanks  had  turned  back  from  St.  Louis)  continued  on 
foot  to  Illinois,  Johnston  remaining  at  the  family  home, 
which  had  meanwhile  been  removed  from  Macon  to 
Coles  County,  and  Lincoln  going  to  his  employer  and 
friends  at  New  Salem.  This  was  in  July  or  August, 
1831.  Neither  Offutt  nor  his  goods  had  yet  arrived, 
and  during  his  waiting  he  had  a  chance  to  show  the 
New  Salemites  another  accomplishment.  An  election 
was  to  be  held,  and  one  of  the  clerks  was  sick  and 
failed  to  come.  Scribes  were  not  plenty  on  the  fron 
tier,  and  Mentor  Graham,  the  clerk  who  was  present, 


24  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

looking  around  for  a  properly  qualified  colleague,  no 
ticed  Lincoln,  and  asked  him  if  he  could  write,  to 
which  he  answered,  in  local  idiom,  that  he  "could 
make  a  few  rabbit  tracks,"  and  was  thereupon  imme 
diately  inducted  into  his  first  office.  He  performed 
his  duties  not  only  to  the  general  satisfaction,  but  so 
as  to  interest  Graham,  who  was  a  schoolmaster,  and 
afterward  made  himself  very  useful  to  Lincoln. 

Offutt  finally  arrived  with  a  miscellaneous  lot  of 
goods,  which  Lincoln  opened  and  put  in  order  in  a 
room  that  a  former  New  Salem  storekeeper  was  just 
ready  to  vacate,  and  whose  remnant  stock  Offutt  also 
purchased.  Trade  was  evidently  not  brisk  at  New 
Salem,  for  the  commercial  zeal  of  Offutt  led  him  to 
increase  his  venture  by  renting  the  Rutledge  and  Cam 
eron  mill,  on  whose  historic  dam  the  flatboat  had 
stuck.  For  a  while  the  charge  of  the  mill  was  added 
to  Lincoln's  duties,  until  another  clerk  was  engaged 
to  help  him.  There  is  likewise  good  evidence  that  in 
addition  to  his  duties  at  the  store  and  the  mill,  Lincoln 
made  himself  generally  useful — that  he  cut  down  trees 
and  split  rails  enough  to  make  a  large  hog-pen  adjoin 
ing  the  mill,  a  proceeding  quite  natural  when  we  re 
member  that  his  hitherto  active  life  and  still  growing 
muscles  imperatively  demanded  the  exercise  which 
measuring  calico  or  weighing  out  sugar  and  coffee 
failed  to  supply. 

We  know  from  other  incidents  that  he  was  possessed 
of  ample  bodily  strength.  In  frontier  life  it  is  not  only 
needed  for  useful  labor  of  many  kinds,  but  is  also 
called  upon  to  aid  in  popular  amusement.  There  was 
a  settlement  in  the  neighborhood  of  New  Salem  called 
Clary's  Grove,  where  lived  a  group  of  restless,  rol 
licking  backwoodsmen  with  a  strong  liking  for  various 
forms  of  frontier  athletics  and  rough  practical  jokes. 


KIRKHAM'S   "GRAMMAR"  25 

In  the  progress  of  American  settlement  there  has  al 
ways  been  a  time,  whether  the  frontier  was  in  New 
England  or  Pennsylvania  or  Kentucky,  or  on  the  banks 
of  the  Mississippi,  when  the  champion  wrestler  held 
some  fraction  of  the  public  consideration  accorded  to 
the  victor  in  the  Olympic  games  of  Greece.  Until  Lin 
coln  came,  Jack  Armstrong  was  the  champion  wrestler 
of  Clary's  Grove  and  New  Salem,  and  picturesque 
stories  are  told  how  the  neighborhood  talk,  inflamed 
by  Offutt's  fulsome  laudation  of  his  clerk,  made  Jack 
Armstrong  feel  that  his  fame  was  in  danger.  Lincoln 
put  off  the  encounter  as  long  as  he  could,  and  when 
the  wrestling  match  finally  came  off  neither  could 
throw  the  other.  The  bystanders  became  satisfied  that 
they  were  equally  matched  in  strength  and  skill,  and 
the  cool  courage  which  Lincoln  manifested  throughout 
the  ordeal  prevented  the  usual  close  of  such  incidents 
with  a  fight.  Instead  of  becoming  chronic  enemies 
and  leaders  of  a  neighborhood  feud,  Lincoln's  self- 
possession  and  good  temper  turned  the  contest  into 
the  beginning  of  a  warm  and  lasting  friendship. 

If  Lincoln's  muscles  were  at  times  hungry  for  work, 
not  less  so  was  his  mind.  He  was  already  instinc 
tively  feeling  his  way  to  his  destiny  when,  in  conver 
sation  with  Mentor  Graham,  the  schoolmaster,  he  indi 
cated  his  desire  to  use  some  of  his  spare  moments  to 
increase  his  education,  and  confided  to  him  his  "no 
tion  to  study  English  grammar."  It  was  entirely  in 
the  nature  of  things  that  Graham  should  encourage 
this  mental  craving,  and  tell  him :  "If  you  expect  to 
go  before  the  public  in  any  capacity,  I  think  it  the  best 
thing  you  can  do."  Lincoln  said  that  if  he  had  a 
grammar  he  would  begin  at  once.  Graham  was  obliged 
to  confess  that  there  was  no  such  book  at  New  Salem, 
but  remembered  that  there  was  one  at  Vaner's,  six 


26  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

miles  away.  Promptly  after  breakfast  the  next  morn 
ing  Lincoln  walked  to  Vaner's  and  procured  the  pre 
cious  volume,  and,  probably  with  Graham's  occasional 
help,  found  no  great  difficulty  in  mastering  its  contents. 
While  tradition  does  not  mention  any  other  study  begun 
at  that  time,  we  may  fairly  infer  that,  slight  as  may 
have  been  Graham's  education,  he  must  have  had  other 
books  from  which,  together  with  his  friendly  advice, 
Lincoln's  intellectual  hunger  derived  further  stimulus 
and  nourishment. 

In  his  duties  at  the  store  and  his  work  at  the  mill, 
in  his  study  of  Kirkham's  "Grammar,"  and  educa 
tional  conversations  with  Mentor  Graham,  in  the  some 
what  rude  but  frank  and  hearty  companionship  of  the 
citizens  of  New  Salem  and  the  exuberant  boys  of 
Clary's  Grove,  Lincoln's  life  for  the  second  half  of 
the  year  1831  appears  not  to  have  been  eventful,  but 
was  doubtless  more  comfortable  and  as  interesting  as 
had  been  his  flatboat  building  and  New  Orleans  voyage 
during  the  first  half.  He  was  busy  in  useful  labor,  and, 
though  he  had  few  chances  to  pick  up  scraps  of  school 
ing,  was  beginning  to  read  deeply  in  that  book  of  hu 
man  nature,  the  profound  knowledge  of  which  ren 
dered  him  such  immense  service  in  after  years. 

The  restlessness  and  ambition  of  the  village  of  New 
Salem  was  many  times  multiplied  in  the  restlessness 
and  ambition  of  Springfield,  fifteen  or  twenty  miles 
away,  which,  located  approximately  near  the  geograph 
ical  center  of  Illinois,  was  already  beginning  to  crave, 
if  not  yet  to  feel,  its  future  destiny  as  the  capital  of 
the  State.  In  November  of  the  same  year  that  aspir 
ing  town  produced  the  first  number  of  its  weekly  news 
paper,  the  "Sangamo  Journal,"  and  in  its  columns 
we  begin  to  find  recorded  historical  data.  Situated 
in  a  region  of  alternating  spaces  of  prairie  and  forest, 


THE  TALISMAN  27 

of  attractive  natural  scenery  and  rich  soil,  it  was  nev 
ertheless  at  a  great  disadvantage  in  the  means  of 
commercial  transportation.  Lying  sixty  miles  from 
Beardstown,  the  nearest  landing  on  the  Illinois  River, 
the  peculiarities  of  soil,  climate,  and  primitive  roads 
rendered  travel  and  land  carriage  extremely  difficult — 
often  entirely  impossible — for  nearly  half  of  every  year. 
The  very  first  number  of  the  "Sangamo  Journal" 
sounded  its  strongest  note  on  the  then  leading  tenet 
of  the  Whig  party — internal  improvements  by  the  gen 
eral  government,  and  active  politics  to  secure  them.  In 
later  numbers  we  learn  that  a  regular  Eastern  mail  had 
not  been  received  for  three  weeks.  The  tide  of  immi 
gration  which  was  pouring  into  Illinois  is  illustrated 
in  a  tabular  statement  on  the  commerce  of  the  Illinois 
River,  showing  that  the  steamboat  arrivals  at  Beards- 
town  had  risen  from  one  each  in  the  years  1828  and 
1829,  and  only  four  in  1830,  to  thirty-two  during  the 
year  1831.  This  naturally  directed  the  thoughts  of 
travelers  and  traders  to  some  better  means  of  reach 
ing  the  river  landing  than  the  frozen  or  muddy  roads 
and  impassable  creeks  and  sloughs  of  winter  and  spring. 
The  use  of  the  Sangamon  River,  flowing  within  five 
miles  of  Springfield  and  emptying  itself  into  the  Illi 
nois  ten  or  fifteen  miles  from  Beardstown,  seemed  for 
the  present  the  only  solution  of  the  problem,  and  a  pub 
lic  meeting  was  called  to  discuss  the  project.  The 
deep  snows  of  the  winter  of  1830-31  abundantly  filled 
the  channels  of  that  stream,  and  the  winter  of  1831-32 
substantially  repeated  its  swelling  floods.  Newcomers 
in  that  region  \vere  therefore  warranted  in  drawing 
the  inference  that  it  might  remain  navigable  for  small 
craft.  Public  interest  on  the  topic  was  greatly  height 
ened  when  one  Captain  Bogue,  commanding  a  small 
steamer  then  at  Cincinnati,  printed  a  letter  in  the 


28  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

"Journal"  of  January  26,  1832,  saying:  "I  intend  to 
try  to  ascend  the  river  [Sangamo]  immediately  on 
the  breaking  up  of  the  ice."  It  was  well  understood 
that  the  chief  difficulty  would  be  that  the  short  turns 
in  the  channels  were  liable  to  be  obstructed  by  a  gorge 
of  driftwood  and  the  limbs  and  trunks  of  overhanging 
trees.  To  provide  for  this,  Captain  Bogue's  letter 
added :  "I  should  be  met  at  the  mouth  of  the  river  by 
ten  or  twelve  men,  having  axes  with  long  handles 
under  the  direction  of  some  experienced  man..  I  shall 
deliver  freight  from  St.  Louis  at  the  landing  on  the 
Sangamo  River  opposite  the  town  of  Springfield  for 
thirty-seven  and  a  half  cents  per  hundred  pounds." 
The  "Journal"  of  February  16  contained  an  adver 
tisement  that  the  "splendid  upper-cabin  steamer  Talis 
man"  would  leave  for  Springfield,  and  the  paper  of 
March  i  announced  her  arrival  at  St.  Louis  on  the 
22d  of  February  with  a  full  cargo.  In  due  time  the 
citizen  committee  appointed  by  the  public  meeting  met 
the  Talisman  at  the  mouth  of  the  Sangamon,  and  the 
"Journal"  of  March  29  announced  with  great  flourish 
that  the  "steamboat  Talisman,  of  one  hundred  and 
fifty  tons  burden,  arrived  at  the  Portland  landing  op 
posite  this  town  on  Saturday  last."  There  was  great 
local  rejoicing  over  this  demonstration  that  the  San 
gamon  was  really  navigable,  and  the  "Journal"  pro 
claimed  with  exultation  that  Springfield  "could  no 
longer  be  considered  an  inland  town." 

President  Jackson's  first  term  was  nearing  its  close, 
and  the  Democratic  party  was  preparing  to  reelect  him. 
The  Whigs,  on  their  part,  had  held  their  first  national 
convention  in  December,  1831,  and  nominated  Henry 
Clay  to  dispute  the  succession.  This  nomination,  made 
almost  a  year  in  advance  of  the  election,  indicates  an 
unusual  degree  of  political  activity  in  the  East,  and 


CANDIDATE  FOR  LEGISLATURE        29 

voters  in  the  new  State  of  Illinois  were  fired  with  an 
equal  party  zeal.  During  the  months  of  January  and 
February,  1832,  no  less  than  six  citizens  of  Sangamon 
County  announced  themselves  in  the  "Sangamo  Jour 
nal"  as  candidates  for  the  State  legislature,  the  elec 
tion  for  which  was  not  to  occur  until  August;  and 
the  "Journal"  °f  March  15  printed  a  long  letter,  ad 
dressed  "To  the  People  of  Sangamon  County,"  under 
date  of  the  ninth,  signed  A.  Lincoln,  and  beginning : 
"FELLOW-CITIZENS  :  Having  become  a  candidate  for 
the  honorable  office  of  one  of  your  representatives  in 
the  next  general  assembly  of  this  State,  in  accordance 
with  an  established  custom  and  the  principles  of  true 
republicanism,  it  becomes  my  duty  to  make  known  to 
you,  the  people  whom  I  propose  to  represent,  my  senti 
ments  with  regard  to  local  affairs."  He  then  takes  up 
and  discusses  in  an  eminently  methodical  and  practical 
way  the  absorbing  topic  of  the  moment — the  Whig 
doctrine  of  internal  improvements  and  its  local  appli 
cation,  the  improvement  of  the  Sangamon  River.  He 
mentions  that  meetings  have  been  held  to  propose  the 
construction  of  a  railroad,  and  frankly  acknowledges 
that  "no  other  improvement  that  reason  will  justify 
us  in  hoping  for  can  equal  in  utility  the  railroad,"  but 
contends  that  its  enormous  cost  precludes  any  such 
hope,  and  that,  therefore,  "the  improvement  of  the 
Sangamon  River  is  an  object  much  better  suited  to 
our  infant  resources."  Relating  his  experience  in 
building  and  navigating  his  flatboat,  and  his  observa 
tion  of  the  stage  of  the  water  since  then,  he  draws  the 
very  plausible  conclusion  that  by  straightening  its 
channel  and  clearing  away  its  driftwood  the  stream  can 
be  made  navigable  "to  vessels  of  from  twenty-five  to 
thirty  tons  burden  for  at  least  one  half  of  all  common 
years,  and  to  vessels  of  much  greater  burden  a  part 


30  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

of  the  time."  His  letter  very  modestly  touches  a  few 
other  points  of  needed  legislation — a  law  against  usury, 
laws  to  promote  education,  and  amendments  to  estray 
and  road  laws.  The  main  interest  for  us,  however,  is 
in  the  frank  avowal  of  his  personal  ambition. 

"Every  man  is  said  to  have  his  peculiar  ambition. 
Whether  it  be  true  or  not,  I  can  say,  for  one,  that  I 
have  no  other  so  great  as  that  of  being  truly  esteemed 
of  my  fellow-men  by  rendering  myself  worthy  of  their 
esteem.  How  far  I  shall  succeed  in  gratifying  this 
ambition  is  yet  to  be  developed.  I  am  young,  and  un 
known  to  many  of  you.  I  was  born,  and  have  ever 
remained,  in  the  most  humble  walks  of  life.  I  have 
no  wealthy  or  popular  relations  or  friends  to  recom 
mend  me.  My  case  is  thrown  exclusively  upon  the 
independent  voters  of  the  country,  and  if  elected  they 
will  have  conferred  a  favor  upon  me  for  which  I  shall 
be  unremitting  in  my  labors  to  compensate.  But  if 
the  good  people  in  their  wisdom  shall  see  fit  to  keep  me 
in  the  background,  I  have  been  too  familiar  with  disap 
pointments  to  be  very  much  chagrined." 

This  written  and  printed  address  gives  us  an  accu 
rate  measure  of  the  man  and  the  time.  When  he  wrote 
this  document  he  was  twenty-three  years  old.  He  had 
been  in  the  town  and  county  only  about  nine  months 
of  actual  time.  As  Sangamon  County  covered  an  esti 
mated  area  of  twenty-one  hundred  and  sixty  square 
miles,  he  could  know  but  little  of  either  it  or  its  peo 
ple.  How  dared  a  "friendless,  uneducated  boy,  work 
ing  on  a  flatboat  at  twelve  dollars  a  month,"  with  "no 
wealthy  or  popular  friends  to  recommend"  him,  aspire 
to  the  honors  and  responsibilities  of  a  legislator?  The 
only  answer  is  that  he  was  prompted  by  that  intuition 
of  genius,  that  consciousness  of  powers  which  justify 
their  claims  by  their  achievements.  When  we  scan 


BLACK  HAWK  WAR  31 

the  circumstances  more  closely,  we  find  distinct  evi 
dence  of  some  reason  for  his  confidence.  Relatively 
speaking,  he  was  neither  uneducated  nor  friendless. 
His  acquirements  were  already  far  beyond  the  simple 
elements  of  reading,  writing,  and  ciphering.  He  wrote 
a  good,  clear,  serviceable  hand;  he  could  talk  well  and 
reason  cogently.  The  simple,  manly  style  of  his  printed 
address  fully  equals  in  literary  ability  that  of  the  aver 
age  collegian  in  the  twenties.  His  migration  from 
Indiana  to  Illinois  and  his  two  voyages  to  New  Or 
leans  had  given  him  a  glimpse  of  the  outside  world. 
His  natural  logic  readily  grasped  the  significance  of  the 
railroad  as  a  new  factor  in  transportation,  although 
the  first  American  locomotive  had  been  built  only  one 
year,  and  ten  to  fifteen  years  were  yet  to  elapse  before 
the  first  railroad  train  was  to  run  in  Illinois. 

One  other  motive  probably  had  its  influence.  He 
tells  us  that  Offutt's  business  was  failing,  and  his  quick 
judgment  warned  him  that  he  would  soon  be  out  of  a 
job  as  clerk.  This,  however,  could  be  only  a  secondary 
reason  for  announcing  himself  as  a  candidate,  for  the 
election  was  not  to  occur  till  August,  and  even  if  he 
were  elected  there  would  be  neither  service  nor  salary 
till  the  coming  winter.  His  venture  into  politics  must 
therefore  be  ascribed  to  the  feeling  which  he  so  frankly 
announced  in  his  letter,  his  ambition  to  become  useful 
to  his  fellow-men — the  impulse  that  throughout  history 
has  singled  out  the  great  leaders  of  mankind. 

In  this  particular  instance  a  crisis  was  also  at  hand, 
calculated  to  develop  and  utilize  the  impulse.  Just 
about  a  month  after  the  publication  of  Lincoln's  an 
nouncement,  the  "Sangamo  Journal"  of  April  19 
printed  an  official  call  from  Governor  Reynolds,  di 
rected  to  General  Neale  of  the  Illinois  militia,  to  or 
ganize  six  hundred  volunteers  of  his  brigade  for  mili- 


32  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

tary  service  in  a  campaign  against  the  Indians  under 
Black  Hawk,  the  war  chief  of  the  Sacs,  who,  in  defiance 
of  treaties  and  promises,  had  formed  a  combination 
with  other  tribes  during  the  winter,  and  had  now 
crossed  back  from  the  west  to  the  east  side  of  the  Mis 
sissippi  River  with  the  determination  to  reoccupy  their 
old  homes  in  the  Rock  River  country  toward  the  north 
ern  end  of  the  State. 

In  the  memoranda  which  Mr.  Lincoln  furnished  for 
a  campaign  biography,  he  thus  relates  what  followed 
the  call  for  troops : 

"Abraham  joined  a  volunteer  company,  and,  to  his 
own  surprise,  was  elected  captain  of  it.  He  says  he 
has  not  since  had  any  success  in  life  which  gave  him  so 
much  satisfaction.  He  went  to  the  campaign,  served 
near  three  months,  met  the  ordinary  hardships  of  such 
an  expedition,  but  was  in  no  battle."  Official  docu 
ments  furnish  some  further  interesting  details.  As 
already  said,  the  call  was  printed  in  the  "Sangamo 
Journal"  of  April  19.  On  April  21  the  company  was 
organized  at  Richland,  Sangamon  County,  and  on 
April  28  was  inspected  and  mustered  into  service  at 
Beardstown  and  attached  to  Colonel  Samuel  Thomp 
son's  regiment,  the  Fourth  Illinois  Mounted  Volun 
teers.  They  marched  at  once  to  the  hostile  frontier.  As 
the  campaign  shaped  itself,  it  probably  became  evident 
to  the  company  that  they  were  not  likely  to  meet  any 
serious  fighting,  and,  not  having  been  enlisted  for  any 
stated  period,  they  became  clamorous  to  return  home. 
The  governor  therefore  had  them  and  other  companies 
mustered  out  of  service,  at  the  mouth  of  Fox  River, 
on  May  27.  Not,  however,  wishing  to  weaken  his 
forces  before  the  arrival  of  new  levies  already  on  the 
way,  he  called  for  volunteers  to  remain  twenty  days 
longer.  Lincoln  had  gone  to  the  frontier  to  perform 


LINCOLN    REENLISTS  33 

real  service,  not  merely  to  enjoy  military  rank  or  reap 
military  glory.  On  the  same  day,  therefore,  on  which  he 
was  mustered  out  as  captain,  he  reenlisted,  and  became 
Private  Lincoln  in  Captain  Iles's  company  of  mounted 
volunteers,  organized  apparently  principally  for  scout 
ing  service,  and  sometimes  called  the  Independent  Spy 
Battalion.  Among  the  other  officers  who  imitated  this 
patriotic  example  were  General  Whiteside  and  Major 
John  T.  Stuart,  Lincoln's  later  law  partner.  The  Inde 
pendent  Spy  Battalion,  having  faithfully  performed  its 
new  term  of  service,  was  finally  mustered  out  on  June 
1 6,  1832.  Lincoln  and  his  messmate,  George  M.  Har 
rison,  had  the  misfortune  to  have  their  horses  stolen  the 
day  before,  but  Harrison  relates : 

"I  laughed  at  our  fate  and  he  joked  at  it,  and  we  all 
started  off  merrily.  The  generous  men  of  our  com 
pany  walked  and  rode  by  turns  with  us,  and  we  fared 
about  equal  with  the  rest.  But  for  this  generosity  our 
legs  would  have  had  to  do  the  better  work ;  for  in  that 
day  this  dreary  route  furnished  no  horses  to  buy  or  to 
steal,  and,  whether  on  horse  or  afoot,  we  always  had 
company,  for  many  of  the  horses'  backs  were  too  sore 
for  riding." 

Lincoln  must  have  reached  home  about  August  I, 
for  the  election  was  to  occur  in  the  second  week  of  that 
month,  and  this  left  him  but  ten  days  in  which  to  push 
his  claims  for  popular  indorsement.  His  friends,  how 
ever,  had  been  doing  manful  duty  for  him  during  his 
three  months'  absence,  and  he  lost  nothing  in  public 
estimation  by  his  prompt  enlistment  to  defend  the  fron 
tier.  Successive  announcements  in  the  "Journal"  had 
by  this  time  swelled  the  list  of  candidates  to  thirteen. 
But  Sangamon  County  was  entitled  to  only  four  rep 
resentatives,  and  when  the  returns  came  in  Lincoln  was 
among  those  defeated.  Nevertheless,  he  made  a  very 


34  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

respectable  showing  in  the  race.  The  list  of  successful 
and  unsuccessful  aspirants  and  their  votes  was  as  fol 
lows: 

E.  D.  Taylor 1 127 

John  T.  Stuart 991 

Achilles  Morris 945 

Peter  Cartwright 815 

Under  the  plurality  rule,  these  four  had  been  elected. 
The  unsuccessful  candidates  were: 

A.  G.  Herndon 806 

W.  Carpenter 774 

J.  Dawson 717 

A.  Lincoln 657 

T.  M.  Neale 571 

R.  Quinton 485 

Z.  Peter 214 

E.  Robinson 169 

Kirkpatrick 44 

The  returns  show  that  the  total  vote  of  the  county 
was  about  twenty-one  hundred  and  sixty-eight.  Com 
paring  this  with  the  vote  cast  for  Lincoln,  we  see  that 
he  received  nearly  one  third  of  the  total  county  vote, 
notwithstanding  his  absence  from  the  canvass,  notwith 
standing  the  fact  that  his  acquaintanceship  was  limited 
to  the  neighborhood  of  New  Salem,  notwithtsanding  the 
sharp  competition.  Indeed,  his  talent  and  fitness  for  ac 
tive  practical  politics  were  demonstrated  beyond  ques 
tion  by  the  result  in  his  home  precinct  of  New  Salem, 
which,  though  he  ran  as  a  Whig,  gave  two  hundred  and 
seventy-seven  votes  for  him  and  only  three  against 
him.  Three  months  later  it  gave  one  hundred  and 
eighty-five  for  the  Jackson  and  only  seventy  for  the 


BLACKSMITH  OR  LAWYER?  35 

Clay  electors,  proving  Lincoln's  personal  popularity. 
He  remembered  for  the  remainder  of  his  life  with  great 
pride  that  this  was  the  only  time  he  was  ever  beaten  on 
a  direct  vote  of  the  people. 

The  result  of  the  election  brought  him  to  one  of  the 
serious  crises  of  his  life,  which  he  forcibly  stated  in 
after  years  in  the  following  written  words : 

"He  was  now  without  means  and  out  of  business,  but 
was  anxious  to  remain  with  his  friends,  who  had  treated 
him  with  so  much  generosity,  especially  as  he  had  noth 
ing  elsewhere  to  go  to.  He  studied  what  he  should  do ; 
thought  of  learning  the  blacksmith  trade,  thought  of 
trying  to  study  law,  rather  thought  he  could  not  suc 
ceed  at  that  without  a  better  education." 

The  perplexing  problem  between  inclination  and 
means  to  follow  it,  the  struggle  between  conscious  tal 
ent  and  the  restraining  fetters  of  poverty,  has  come  to 
millions  of  young  Americans  before  and  since,  but  per 
haps  to  none  with  a  sharper  trial  of  spirit  or  more  reso 
lute  patience.  Before  he  had  definitely  resolved  upon 
either  career,  chance  served  not  to  solve,  but  to  post 
pone  his  difficulty,  and  in  the  end  to  greatly  increase  it. 

New  Salem,  which  apparently  never  had  any  good 
reason  for  becoming  a  town,  seems  already  at  that  time 
to  have  entered  on  the  road  to  rapid  decay.  Offutt's 
speculations  had  failed,  and  he  had  disappeared.  The 
brothers  Herndon,  who  had  opened  a  new  store,  found 
business  dull  and  unpromising.  Becoming  tired  of  their 
undertaking,  they  offered  to  sell  out  to  Lincoln  and 
Berry  on  credit,  and  took  their  promissory  notes  in  pay 
ment.  The  new  partners,  in  that  excess  of  hope  which 
usually  attends  all  new  ventures,  also  bought  two  other 
similar  establishments  that  were  in  extremity,  and  for 
these  likewise  gave  their  notes.  It  is  evident  that  the 
confidence  which  Lincoln  had  inspired  while  he  was 


36  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

a  clerk  in  Offutt's  store,  and  the  enthusiastic  support 
he  had  received  as  a  candidate,  were  the  basis  of  credit 
that  sustained  these  several  commercial  transactions. 

It  turned  out  in  the  long  run  that  Lincoln's  credit 
and  the  popular  confidence  that  supported  it  were  as 
valuable  both  to  his  creditors  and  himself  as  if  the  sums 
which  stood  over  his  signature  had  been  gold  coin  in 
a  solvent  bank.  But  this  transmutation  was  not  at 
tained  until  he  had  passed  through  a  very  furnace  of 
financial  embarrassment.  Berry  proved  a  worthless 
partner,  and  the  business  a  sorry  failure.  Seeing  this, 
Lincoln  and  Berry  sold  out  again  on  credit — to  the 
Trent  brothers,  who  soon  broke  up  and  ran  away. 
Berry  also  departed  and  died,  and  finally  all  the  notes 
came  back  upon  Lincoln  for  payment.  He  was  unable 
to  meet  these  obligations,  but  he  did  the  next  best  thing. 
He  remained,  promised  to  pay  when  he  could,  and  most 
of  his  creditors,  maintaining  their  confidence  in  his  in 
tegrity,  patiently  bided  their  time,  till,  in  the  course 
of  long  years,  he  fully  justified  it  by  paying,  with  in 
terest,  every  cent  of  what  he  learned  to  call,  in  humor 
ous  satire  upon  his  own  folly,  the  "national  debt." 

With  one  of  them  he  was  not  so  fortunate.  Van  Ber 
gen,  who  bought  one  of  the  Lincoln-Berry  notes,  ob 
tained  judgment,  and,  by  peremptory  sale,  swept  away 
the  horse,  saddle,  and  surveying  instruments  with  the 
daily  use  of  which  Lincoln  "procured  bread  and  kept 
body  and  soul  together,"  to  use  his  own  words.  But 
here  again  Lincoln's  recognized  honesty  was  his  safety. 
Out  of  personal  friendship,  James  Short  bought  the 
property  and  restored  it  to  the  young  surveyor,  giving 
him  time  to  repay.  It  was  not  until  his  return  from 
Congress,  seventeen  years  after  the  purchase  of  the 
store,  that  he  finally  relieved  himself  of  the  last  instal 
ments  of  his  "national  debt."  But  by  these  seventeen 


APPOINTED   POSTMASTER  37 

years  of  sober  industry,  rigid  economy,  and  unflinching 
faith  to  his  obligations  he  earned  the  title  of  "Honest 
old  Abe,"  which  proved  of  greater  service  to  himself 
and  his  country  than  if  he  had  gained  the  wealth  of 
Crcesus. 

Out  of  this  ill-starred  commercial  speculation,  how 
ever,  Lincoln  derived  one  incidental  benefit,  and  it  may 
be  said  it  became  the  determining  factor  in  his  career. 
It  is  evident  from  his  own  language  that  he  underwent 
a  severe  mental  struggle  in  deciding  whether  he  would 
become  a  blacksmith  or  a  lawyer.  In  taking  a  middle 
course,  and  trying  to  become  a  merchant,  he  probably 
kept  the  latter  choice  strongly  in  view.  It  seems  well 
established  by  local  tradition  that  during  the  period 
while  the  Lincoln-Berry  store  was  running  its  fore 
doomed  course  from  bad  to  worse,  Lincoln  employed 
all  the  time  he  could  spare  from  his  customers  (and  he 
probably  had  many  leisure  hours)  in  reading  and  study 
of  various  kinds.  This  habit  was  greatly  stimulated 
and  assisted  by  his  being  appointed,  May  7,  1833,  post 
master  at  New  Salem,  which  office  he  continued  to  hold 
until  May  30,  1836,  when  New  Salem  partially  disap 
peared,  and  the  office  was  removed  to  Petersburg.  The 
influences  which  brought  about  the  selection  of  Lincoln 
are  not  recorded,  but  it  is  suggested  that  he  had  acted 
for  some  time  as  deputy  postmaster  under  the  former 
incumbent,  and  thus  became  the  natural  successor. 
Evidently  his  politics  formed  no  objection,  as  New 
Salem  precinct  had  at  the  August  election,  when  he 
ran  as  a  Whig,  given  him  its  almost  solid  vote  for  rep 
resentative,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  it  was  more 
than  two  thirds  Democratic.  The  postmastership  in 
creased  his  public  consideration  and  authority,  broad 
ened  his  business  experience,  and  the  newspapers  he 
handled  provided  him  an  abundance  of  reading  matter 


38  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

on  topics  of  both  local  and  national  importance  up  to 
the  latest  dates. 

Those  were  stirring  times,  even  on  the  frontier. 
The  "Sangamo  Journal"  of  December  30,  1832,  printed 
Jackson's  nullification  proclamation.  The  same  paper, 
of  March  9,  1833,  contained  an  editorial  on  Clay's  com 
promise,  and  that  of  the  i6th  had  a  notice  of  the  great 
nullification  debate  in  Congress.  The  speeches  of  Clay, 
Calhoun,  and  Webster  were  published  in  full  during  the 
following  month,  and  Mr.  Lincoln  could  not  well  help 
reading  them  and  joining  in  the  feelings  and  com 
ments  they  provoked. 

While  the  town  of  New  Salem  was  locally  dying, 
the  county  of  Sangamon  and  the  State  of  Illinois  were 
having  what  is  now  called  a  boom.  Other  wide-awake 
newspapers,  such  as  the  "Missouri  Republican"  and 
"Louisville  Journal,"  abounded  in  notices  of  the  estab 
lishment  of  new  stage  lines  and  the  general  rush  of 
immigration.  But  the  joyous  dream  of  the  New  Salem- 
ites,  that  the  Sangamon  River  would  become  a  com 
mercial  highway,  quickly  faded.  The  Talisman  was 
obliged  to  hurry  back  down  the  rapidly  falling  stream, 
tearing  away  a  portion  of  the  famous  dam  to  permit 
her  departure.  There  were  rumors  that  another 
steamer,  the  Sylph,  would  establish  regular  trips  be 
tween  Springfield  and  Beardstown,  but  she  never  came. 
The  freshets  and  floods  of  1831  and  1832  were  suc 
ceeded  by  a  series  of  dry  seasons,  and  the  navigation  of 
the  Sangamon  River  was  never  afterward  a  telling 
plank  in  the  county  platform  of  either  political  party. 


Ill 

Appointed  Deputy  Surveyor  —  Elected  to  Legislature  in 
1834  —  Campaign  Issues  —  Begins  Study  of  Law  —  In 
ternal  Improvement  System  —  The  Lincoln-Stone  Pro 
test  —  Candidate  for  Speaker  in  1838  and  1840 


Lincoln  was  appointed  postmaster,  in  May, 
1833,  the  Lincoln-Berry  store  had  not  yet  com 
pletely  "winked  out,"  to  use  his  own  picturesque  phrase. 
When  at  length  he  ceased  to  be  a  merchant,  he  yet  re 
mained  a  government  official,  a  man  of  consideration 
and  authority,  who  still  had  a  responsible  occupation 
and  definite  home,  where  he  could  read,  write,  and 
study.  The  proceeds  of  his  office  were  doubtless  very 
meager,  but  in  that  day,  when  the  rate  of  postage  on 
letters  was  still  twenty-five  cents,  a  little  change  now 
and  then  came  into  his  hands,  which,  in  the  scarcity 
of  money  prevailing  on  the  frontier,  had  an  importance 
difficult  for  us  to  appreciate.  His  positions  as  candi 
date  for  the  legislature  and  as  postmaster  probably  had 
much  to  do  in  bringing  him  another  piece  of  good  for 
tune.  In  the  rapid  settlement  of  Illinois  and  Sanga- 
mon  County,  and  the  obtaining  titles  to  farms  by  pur 
chase  or  preemption,  as  well  as  in  the  locating  and 
opening  of  new  roads,  the  county  surveyor  had  more 
work  on  his  hands  than  he  could  perform  throughout 
a  county  extending  forty  miles  east  and  west  and  fifty 
north  and  south,  and  was  compelled  to  appoint  depu 
ties  to  assist  him.  The  name  of  the  county  surveyor 
was  John  Calhoun,  recognized  by  all  his  contempo- 

39 


40  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

raries  in  Sangamon  as  a  man  of  education  and  talent 
and  an  aspiring  Democratic  politician.  It  was  not  an 
easy  matter  for  Calhoun  to  find  properly  qualified  depu 
ties,  and  when  he  became  acquainted  with  Lincoln,  and 
learned  his  attainments  and  aptitudes,  and  the  estima 
tion  in  which  he  was  held  by  the  people  of  New  Salem, 
he  wisely  concluded  to  utilize  his  talents  and  standing, 
notwithstanding  their  difference  in  politics.  The  inci 
dent  is  thus  recorded  by  Lincoln : 

"The  surveyor  of  Sangamon  offered  to  depute  to 
Abraham  that  portion  of  his  work  which  was  within 
his  part  of  the  county.  He  accepted,  procured  a  com 
pass  and  chain,  studied  Flint  and  Gibson  a  little,  and 
went  at  it.  This  procured  bread,  and  kept  soul  and 
body  together." 

Tradition  has  it  that  Calhoun  not  only  gave  him 
the  appointment,  but  lent  him  the  book  in  which  to 
study  the  art,  which  he  accomplished  in  a  period  of  six 
weeks,  aided  by  the  schoolmaster,  Mentor  Graham. 
The  exact  period  of  this  increase  in  knowledge  and 
business  capacity  is  not  recorded,  but  it  must  have  taken 
place  in  the  summer  of  1833,  as  there  exists  a  certifi 
cate  of  survey  in  Lincoln's  handwriting  signed,  "J. 
Calhoun,  S.  S.  C.,  by  A.  Lincoln,"  dated  January  14, 
1834.  Before  June  of  that  year  he  had  surveyed  and 
located  a  public  road  from  "Musick's  Ferry  on  Salt 
Creek,  via  New  Salem,  to  the  county  line  in  the  direc 
tion  to  Jacksonville,"  twenty-six  miles  and  seventy 
chains  in  length,  the  exact  course  of  which  survey,  with 
detailed  bearings  and  distances,  was  drawn  on  common 
white  letter-paper  pasted  in  a  long  slip,  to  a  scale  of  two 
inches  to  the  mile,  in  ordinary  yet  clear  and  distinct 
penmanship.  The  compensation  he  received  for  this  ser 
vice  was  three  dollars  per  day  for  five  days,  and  two 
dollars  and  fifty  cents  for  making  the  plat  and  report. 


DEPUTY   SURVEYOR  41 

An  advertisement  in  the  "Journal"  shows  that  the  reg 
ular  fees  of  another  deputy  were  "two  dollars  per  day, 
or  one  dollar  per  lot  of  eight  acres  or  less,  and  fifty 
cents  for  a  single  line,  with  ten  cents  per  mile  for 
traveling." 

While  this  class  of  work  and  his  post-office,  with  its 
emoluments,  probably  amply  supplied  his  board,  lodg 
ing,  and  clothing,  it  left  him  no  surplus  with  which  to 
pay  his  debts,  for  it  was  in  the  latter  part  of  that  same 
year  (1834)  that  Van  Bergen  caused  his  horse  and 
surveying  instruments  to  be  sold  under  the  hammer,  as 
already  related.  Meanwhile,  amid  these  fluctuations 
of  good  and  bad  luck,  Lincoln  maintained  his  equa 
nimity,  his  steady,  persevering  industry,  and  his  hope 
ful  ambition  and  confidence  in  the  future.  Through 
all  his  misfortunes  and  his  failures,  he  preserved  his 
self-respect  and  his  determination  to  succeed. 

Two  years  had  nearly  elapsed  since  he  was  defeated 
for  the  legislature,  and,  having  received  so  flattering  a 
vote  on  that  occasion,  it  was  entirely  natural  that  he 
should  determine  to  try  a  second  chance.  Four  new 
representatives  were  to  be  chosen  at  the  August  elec 
tion  of  1834,  and  near  the  end  of  April  Lincoln  pub 
lished  his  announcement  that  he  would  again  be  a  can 
didate.  He  could  certainly  view  his  expectations  in 
every  way  in  a  more  hopeful  light.  His  knowledge 
had  increased,  his  experience  broadened,  his  acquain 
tanceship  greatly  increased.  His  talents  were  acknow 
ledged,  his  ability  recognized.  He  was  postmaster  and 
deputy  surveyor.  He  had  become  a  public  character 
whose  services  were  in  demand.  As  compared  with 
the  majority  of  his  neighbors,  he  was  a  man  of  learn 
ing  who  had  seen  the  world.  Greater,  however,  than 
all  these  advantages,  his  sympathetic  kindness  of  heart, 
his  sincere,  open  frankness,  his  sturdy,  unshrinking 


42  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

honesty,  and  that  inborn  sense  of  justice  that  yielded 
to  no  influence,  made  up  a  nobility  of  character  and 
bearing  that  impressed  the  rude  frontiersmen  as  much 
as,  if  not  more  quickly  and  deeply  than,  it  would 
have  done  the  most  polished  and  erudite  society. 

Beginning  his  campaign  in  April,  he  had  three  full 
months  before  him  for  electioneering,  and  he  evidently 
used  the  time  to  good  advantage.  The  pursuit  of  popu 
larity  probably  consisted  mainly  of  the  same  methods 
that  in  backwoods  districts  prevail  even  to  our  day : 
personal  visits  and  solicitations,  attendance  at  various 
kinds  of  neighborhood  gatherings,  such  as  raisings  of 
new  cabins,  horse-races,  shooting-matches,  sales  of 
town  lots  or  of  personal  property  under  execution,  or 
whatever  occasion  served  to  call  a  dozen  or  two  of  the 
settlers  together.  One  recorded  incident  illustrates  the 
practical  nature  of  the  politician's  art  at  that  day : 

"He  [Lincoln]  came  to  my  house,  near  Island  Grove, 
during  harvest.  There  were  some  thirty  men  in  the 
field.  He  got  his  dinner  and  went  out  in  the  field  where 
the  men  were  at  work.  I  gave  him  an  introduction,  and 
the  boys  said  that  they  could  not  vote  for  a  man  unless 
he  could  make  a  hand.  'Well,  boys/  said  he,  'if  that  is 
all,  I  am  sure  of  your  votes.'  He  took  hold  of  the 
cradle,  and  led  the  way  all  the  round  with  perfect  ease. 
The  boys  were  satisfied,  and  I  don't  think  he  lost  a 
vote  in  the  crowd." 

Sometimes  two  or  more  candidates  would  meet  at 
such  places,  and  short  speeches  be  called  for  and  given. 
Altogether,  the  campaign  was  livelier  than  that  of  two 
years  before.  Thirteen  candidates  were  again  contest 
ing  for  the  four  seats  in  the  legislature,  to  say  nothing 
of  candidates  for  governor,  for  Congress,  and  for  the 
State  Senate.  The  scope  of  discussion  was  enlarged 
and  localized.  From  the  published  addre*ss  of  an  indus- 


ELECTED  TO   LEGISLATURE  43 

trious  aspirant  who  received  only  ninety-two  votes,  we 
learn  that  the  issues  now  were  the  construction  by  the 
general  government  of  a  canal  from  Lake  Michigan  to 
the  Illinois  River,  the  improvement  of  the  Sangamon 
River,  the  location  of  the  State  capital  at  Springfield, 
a  United  States  bank,  a  better  road  law,  and  amend 
ments  to  the  estray  laws. 

When  the  election  returns  came  in  Lincoln  had  rea 
son  to  be  satisfied  with  the  efforts  he  had  made.  He 
received  the  second  highest  number  of  votes  in  the  long 
list  of  candidates.  Those  cast  for  the  representatives 
chosen  stood:  Dawson,  1390;  Lincoln,  1376;  Carpen 
ter,  1170;  Stuart,  1164.  The  location  of  the  State 
capital  had  also  been  submitted  to  popular  vote  at  this 
election.  Springfield,  being  much  nearer  the  geograph 
ical  center  of  the  State,  was  anxious  to  deprive  Van- 
dalia  of  that  honor,  and  the  activity  of  the  Sangamon 
politicians  proved  it  to  be  a  dangerous  rival.  In  the 
course  of  a  month  the  returns  from  all  parts  of  the 
State  had  come  in,  and  showed  that  Springfield  was 
third  in  the  race. 

It  must  be  frankly  admitted  that  Lincoln's  success 
at  this  juncture  was  one  of  the  most  important  events 
of  his  life.  A  second  defeat  might  have  discouraged 
his  efforts  to  lift  himself  to  a  professional  career,  and 
sent  him  to  the  anvil  to  make  horseshoes  and  to  iron 
wagons  for  the  balance  of  his  days.  But  this  hand 
some  popular  indorsement  assured  his  standing  and 
confirmed  his  credit.  With  this  lift  in  the  clouds  of  his 
horizon,  he  could  resolutely  carry  his  burden  of  debt 
and  hopefully  look  to  wider  fields  of  public  usefulness. 
Already,  during  the  progress  of  the  canvass,  he  had 
received  cheering  encouragement  and  promise  of  most 
valuable  help.  One  of  the  four  successful  candidates 
was  John  T.  Stuart,  who  had  been  major  of  volun- 


44  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

teers  in  the  Black  Hawk  War  while  Lincoln  was  cap 
tain,  and  who,  together  with  Lincoln,  had  reenlisted 
as  a  private  in  the  Independent  Spy  Battalion.  There 
is  every  likelihood  that  the  two  had  begun  a  personal 
friendship  during  their  military  service,  which  was  of 
course  strongly  cemented  by  their  being  fellow-candi 
dates  and  both  belonging  to  the  Whig  party.  Mr. 
Lincoln  relates : 

"Major  John  T.  Stuart,  then  in  full  practice  of  the 
law  [at  Springfield],  was  also  elected.  During  the 
canvass,  in  a  private  conversation  he  encouraged  Abra 
ham  to  study  law.  After  the  election,  he  borrowed 
books  of  Stuart,  took  them  home  with  him,  and 
went  at  it  in  good  earnest.  He  studied  with  nobody. 
In  the  autumn  of  1836  he  obtained  a  law 
license,  and  on  April  15,  1837,  removed  to  Springfield 
and  commenced  the  practice,  his  old  friend  Stuart  tak 
ing  him  into  partnership." 

From  and  after  this  election  in  1834  as  a  represen 
tative,  Lincoln  was  a  permanent  factor  in  the  politics 
and  the  progress  of  Sangamon  County.  At  a  Spring 
field  meeting  in  the  following  November  to  promote 
common  schools,  he  was  appointed  one  of  eleven  dele 
gates  to  attend  a  convention  at  Vandalia  called  to  de 
liberate  on  that  subject.  He  was  reflected  to  the  legis 
lature  in  1836,  in  1838,  and  in  1840,  and  thus  for  a 
period  of  eight  years  took  a  full  share  in  shaping  and 
enacting  the  public  and  private  laws  of  Illinois,  which 
in  our  day  has  become  one  of  the  leading  States  in  the 
Mississippi  valley.  Of  Lincoln's  share  in  that  legisla 
tion,  it  need  only  be  said  that  it  was  as  intelligent  and 
beneficial  to  the  public  interest  as  that  of  the  best  of  his 
colleagues.  The  most  serious  error  committed  by  the 
legislature  of  Illinois  during  that  period  was  that  it 
enacted  laws  setting  on  foot  an  extensive  system  of 


INTERNAL   IMPROVEMENTS  45 

internal  improvements,  in  the  form  of  railroads  and 
canals,  altogether  beyond  the  actual  needs  of  trans 
portation  for  the  then  existing  population  of  the  State, 
and  the  consequent  reckless  creation  of  a  State  debt  for 
money  borrowed  at  extravagant  interest  and  liberal 
commissions.  The  State  underwent  a  season  of  specula 
tive  intoxication,  in  which,  by  the  promised  and  expected 
rush  of  immigration  and  the  swelling  currents  of  its 
business,  its  farms  were  suddenly  to  become  villages, 
its  villages  spreading  towns,  and  its  towns  transformed 
into  great  cities,  while  all  its  people  were  to  be  made 
rich  by  the  increased  value  of  their  land  and  property. 
Both  parties  entered  with  equal  recklessness  into 
this  ill-advised  internal  improvement  system,  which  in 
the  course  of  about  four  years  brought  the  State  to 
bankruptcy,  with  no  substantial  works  to  show  for  the 
foolishly  expended  millions. 

In  voting  for  these  measures,  Mr.  Lincoln  repre 
sented  the  public  opinion  and  wish  of  his  county  and 
the  whole  State ;  and  while  he  was  as  blamable,  he  was 
at  the  same  time  no  more  so  than  the  wisest  of  his  col 
leagues.  It  must  be  remembered  in  extenuation  that 
he  was  just  beginning  his  parliamentary  education. 
From  the  very  first,  however,  he  seems  to  have  become 
a  force  in  the  legislature,  and  to  have  rendered  special 
service  to  his  constituents.  It  is  conceded  that  the  one 
object  which  Springfield  and  the  most  of  Sangamon 
County  had  at  heart  was  the  removal  of  the  capital 
from  Vandalia  to  that  place.  This  was  accomplished 
in  1836,  and  the  management  of  the  measure  appears 
to  have  been  intrusted  mainly  to  Mr.  Lincoln. 

One  incident  of  his  legislative  career  stands  out  in 
such  prominent  relation  to  the  great  events  of  his  after 
life  that  it  deserves  special  explanation  and  emphasis. 
Even  at  that  early  date,  a  quarter  of  a  century  before 


46  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War,  the  slavery  question  was 
now  and  then  obtruding  itself  as  an  irritating  and  per 
plexing  element  into  the  local  legislation  of  almost 
every  new  State.  Illinois,  though  guaranteed  its  free 
dom  by  the  Ordinance  of  1787,  nevertheless  underwent 
a  severe  political  struggle  in  which,  about  four  years 
after  her  admission  into  the  Union,  politicians  and  set 
tlers  from  the  South  made  a  determined  effort  to  change 
her  to  a  slave  State.  The  legislature  of  1822-23,  with 
a  two-thirds  pro-slavery  majority  of  the  State  Senate, 
and  a  technical,  but  legally  questionable,  two-thirds 
majority  in  the  House,  submitted  to  popular  vote  an 
act  calling  a  State  convention  to  change  the  constitu 
tion.  It  happened,  fortunately,  that  Governor  Coles, 
though  a  Virginian,  was  strongly  antislavery,  and  gave 
the  weight  of  his  official  influence  and  his  whole  four 
years'  salary  to  counteract  the  dangerous  scheme. 
From  the  fact  that  southern  Illinois  up  to  that  time 
was  mostly  peopled  from  the  slave  States,  the  result 
was  seriously  in  doubt  through  an  active  and  exciting 
campaign,  and  the  convention  was  finally  defeated  by 
a  majority  of  eighteen  hundred  in  a  total  vote  of  eleven 
thousand  six  hundred  and  twelve.  While  this  result 
effectually  decided  that  Illinois  would  remain  a  free 
State,  the  propagandism  and  reorganization  left  a  deep 
and  tenacious  undercurrent  of  pro-slavery  opinion  that 
for  many  years  manifested  itself  in  vehement  and  in 
tolerant  outcries  against  "abolitionism,"  which  on  one 
occasion  caused  the  murder  of  Elijah  P.  Love  joy  for 
persisting  in  his  right  to  print  an  antislavery  newspaper 
at  Alton. 

Nearly  a  year  before  this  tragedy  the  Illinois  legisla 
ture  had  under  consideration  certain  resolutions  from 
the  Eastern  States  on  the  subject  of  slavery,  and  the 
committee  to  which  they  had  been  referred  reported  a 


LINCOLN-STONE   PROTEST  47 

set  of  resolves  "highly  disapproving  abolition  societies," 
holding  that  "the  right  of  property  in  slaves  is  secured 
to  the  slaveholding  States  by  the  Federal  Constitu 
tion,"  together  with  other  phraseology  calculated  on 
the  whole  to  soothe  and  comfort  pro-slavery  sentiment. 
After  much  irritating  discussion,  the  committee's  reso 
lutions  were  finally  passed,  with  but  Lincoln  and 
five  others  voting  in  the  negative.  No  record  remains 
whether  or  not  Lincoln  joined  in  the  debate;  but,  to 
leave  no  doubt  upon  his  exact  position  and  feeling,  he 
and  his  colleague,  Dan  Stone,  caused  the  following  pro 
test  to  be  formally  entered  on  the  journals  of  the 
House : 

"Resolutions  upon  the  subject  of  domestic  slavery 
having  passed  both  branches  of  the  General  Assembly 
at  its  present  session,  the  undersigned  hereby  protest 
against  the  passage  of  the  same. 

"They  believe  that  the  institution  of  slavery  is 
founded  on  both  injustice  and  bad  policy,  but  that  the 
promulgation  of  abolition  doctrines  tends  rather  to  in 
crease  than  abate  its  evils. 

"They  believe  that  the  Congress  of  the  United  States 
has  no  power  under  the  Constitution  to  interfere  with 
the  institution  of  slavery  in  the  different  States. 

"They  believe  that  the  Congress  of  the  United  States 
has  the  power,  under  the  Constitution,  to  abolish  sla 
very  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  but  that  the  power 
ought  not  to  be  exercised,  unless  at  the  request  of  the 
people  of  the  District. 

"The  difference  between  these  opinions  and  those 
contained  in  the  said  resolutions  is  their  reasons  for 
entering  this  protest." 

In  view  of  the  great  scope  and  quality  of  Lincoln's 
public  service  in  after  life,  it  would  be  a  waste  of  time 
to  trace  out  in  detail  his  words  or  his  votes  upon  the 


48  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

multitude  of  questions  on  which  he  acted  during  this 
legislative  career  of  eight  years.  It  needs  only  to  be 
remembered  that  it  formed  a  varied  and  thorough 
school  of  parliamentary  practice  and  experience  that 
laid  the  broad  foundation  of  that  extraordinary  skill 
and  sagacity  in  statesmanship  which  he  afterward  dis 
played  in  party  controversy  and  executive  direction. 
The  quick  proficiency  and  ready  aptitude  for  leader 
ship  evidenced  by  him  in  this,  as  it  may  be  called,  his 
preliminary  parliamentary  school  are  strikingly  proved 
by  the  fact  that  the  Whig  members  of  the  Illinois  House 
of  Representatives  gave  him  their  full  party  vote 
for  Speaker,  both  in  1838  and  1840.  But  being  in  a 
minority,  they  could  not,  of  course,  elect  him. 


IV 


Law  Practice — Rules  for  a  Lawyer — Law  and  Politics: 
Twin  Occupations — The  Springfield  Coterie — Friendly 
Help — Anne  Rutledge — Mary  Owens 

EsICOLN'S  removal  from  New  Salem  to  Spring 
field  and  his  entrance  into  a  law  partnership  with 
Major  John  T.  Stuart  begin  a  distinctively  new  period 
in  his  career.  From  this  point  we  need  not  trace  in 
detail  his  progress  in  his  new  and  this  time  deliberately 
chosen  vocation.  The  lawyer  who  works  his  way  up  in 
professional  merit  from  a  five-dollar  fee  in  a  suit  before 
a  justice  of  the  peace  to  a  five-thousand-dollar  fee  be 
fore  the  Supreme  Court  of  his  State  has  a  long  and  diffi 
cult  path  to  climb.  Mr.  Lincoln  climbed  this  path  for 
twenty-five  years  with  industry,  perseverance,  patience 
— above  all,  with  that  sense  of  moral  responsibility  that 
always  clearly  traced  the  dividing  line  between  his  duty 
to  his  client  and  his  duty  to  society  and  truth.  His 
unqualified  frankness  of  statement  assured  him  the  con 
fidence  of  judge  and  jury  in  every  argument.  His  habit 
of  fully  admitting  the  weak  points  in  his  case  gained 
their  close  attention  to  its  strong  ones,  and  when  clients 
brought  him  bad  cases,  his  uniform  advice  was  not  to 
begin  the  suit.  Among  his  miscellaneous  writings 
there  exist  some  fragments  of  autograph  notes,  evi 
dently  intended  for  a  little  lecture  or  talk  to  law  stu 
dents,  which  set  forth  with  brevity  and  force  his  opin 
ion  of  what  a  lawyer  ought  to  be  and  do.  He  earnestly 
commends  diligence  in  study,  and,  next  to  diligence, 
promptness  in  keeping  up  his  work. 

49 


50  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

"As  a  general  rule,  never  take  your  whole  fee  in  ad 
vance,"  he  says,  "nor  any  more  than  a  small  retainer. 
When  fully  paid  beforehand,  you  are  more  than  a  com 
mon  mortal  if  you  can  feel  the  same  interest  in  the  case 
as  if  something  was  still  in  prospect  for  you  as  well 
as  for  your  client."  "Extemporaneous  speaking- 
should  be  practised  and  cultivated.  It  is  the  lawyer's 
avenue  to  the  public.  However  able  and  faithful  he 
may  be  in  other  respects,  people  are  slow  to  bring  him 
business  if  he  cannot  make  a  speech.  And  yet,  there 
is  not  a  more  fatal  error  to  young  lawyers  than  relying 
too  much  on  speech-making.  If  any  one,  upon  his  rare 
powers  of  speaking,  shall  claim  an  exemption  from  the 
drudgery  of  the  law,  his  case  is  a  failure  in  advance. 
Discourage  litigation.  Persuade  your  neighbors  to 
compromise  whenever  you  can.  Point  out  to  them 
how  the  nominal  winner  is  often  a  real  loser — in  fees, 
expenses,  and  waste  of  time.  As  a  peacemaker,  the 
lawyer  has  a  superior  opportunity  of  being  a  good  man. 
There  will  still  be  business  enough.  Never  stir  up  liti 
gation.  A  worse  man  can  scarcely  be  found  than  one 
who  does  this.  Who  can  be  more  nearly  a  fiend  than 
he  who  habitually  overhauls  the  register  of  deeds  in 
search  of  defects  in  titles,  whereon  to  stir  up  strife  and 
put  money  in  his  pocket?  A  moral  tone  ought  to  be 
infused  into  the  profession  which  should  drive  such 
men  out  of  it."  "There  is  a  vague  popular  belief  that 
lawyers  are  necessarily  dishonest.  I  say  vague  because 
when  we  consider  to  what  extent  confidence  and  honors 
are  reposed  in  and  conferred  upon  lawyers  by  the  peo 
ple,  it  appears  improbable  that  their  impression  of  dis 
honesty  is  very  distinct  and  vivid.  Yet  the  impression 
is  common — almost  universal.  Let  no  young  man 
choosing  the  law  for  a  calling  for  a  moment  yield  to 
the  popular  belief.  Resolve  to  be  honest  at  all  events ; 


LAW  AND  POLITICS  51 

and  if,  in  your  own  judgment,  you  cannot  be  an  hon 
est  lawyer,  resolve  to  be  honest  without  being  a  lawyer. 
Choose  some  other  occupation,  rather  than  one  in  the 
choosing  of  which  you  do,  in  advance,  consent  to  be  a 
knave." 

While  Lincoln  thus  became  a  lawyer,  he  did  not  cease 
to  remain  a  politician.  In  the  early  West,  law  and  poli 
tics  were  parallel  roads  to  usefulness  as  well  as  distinc 
tion.  Newspapers  had  not  then  reached  any  consider 
able  circulation.  There  existed  neither  fast  presses 
to  print  them,  mail  routes  to  carry  them,  nor  subscribers 
to  read  them.  Since  even  the  laws  had  to  be  newly 
framed  for  those  new  communities,  the  lawyer  became 
the  inevitable  political  instructor  and  guide  as  far  as 
ability  and  fame  extended.  His  reputation  as  a  lawyer 
was  a  twin  of  his  influence  as  an  orator,  whether 
through  logic  or  eloquence.  Local  conditions  fostered, 
almost  necessitated,  this  double  pursuit.  Westward  emi 
gration  was  in  its  full  tide,  and  population  was  pouring 
into  the  great  State  of  Illinois  with  ever  accelerating 
rapidity.  Settlements  were  spreading,  roads  were  being 
opened,  towns  laid  out,  the  larger  counties  divided 
and  new  ones  organized,  and  the  enthusiastic  visions 
of  coming  prosperity  threw  the  State  into  that  fever 
of  speculation  which  culminated  in  wholesale  internal 
improvements  on  borrowed  capital  and  brought  col 
lapse,  stagnation,  and  bankruptcy  in  its  inevitable  train. 
As  already  said,  these  swift  changes  required  a  plenti 
ful  supply  of  new  laws,  to  frame  which  lawyers  were 
in  a  large  proportion  sent  to  the  legislature  every  two 
years.  These  same  lawyers  also  filled  the  bar  and  re 
cruited  the  bench  of  the  new  State,  and,  as  they  fol 
lowed  the  itinerant  circuit  courts  from  county  to 
county  in  their  various  sections,  were  called  upon  in 
these  summer  wanderings  to  explain  in  public  speeches 


52  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

their  legislative  work  of  the  winter.  By  a  natural  con 
nection,  this  also  involved  a  discussion  of  national  and 
party  issues.  It  was  also  during  this  period  that  party 
activity  was  stimulated  by  the  general  adoption  of  the 
new  system  of  party  caucuses  and  party  conventions 
to  which  President  Jackson  had  given  the  impulse. 

In  the  American  system  of  representative  govern 
ment,  elections  not  only  occur  with  the  regularity  of 
clockwork,  but  pervade  the  whole  organism  in  every 
degree  of  its  structure  from  top  to  bottom — Federal, 
State,  county,  township,  and  school  district.  In  Illi 
nois,  even  the  State  judiciary  has  at  different  times 
been  chosen  by  popular  ballot.  The  function  of  the 
politician,  therefore,  is  one  of  continuous  watchfulness 
and  activity,  and  he  must  have  intimate  knowledge  of 
details  if  he  would  work  out  grand  results.  Activity 
in  politics  also  produces  eager  competition  and  sharp 
rivalry.  In  1839  the  seat  of  government  was  definitely 
transferred  from  Vandalia  to  Springfield,  and  there 
soon  gathered  at  the  new  State  capital  a  group  of  young 
men  whose  varied  ability  and  future  success  in  public 
service  has  rarely  been  excelled — Douglas,  Shields,  Cal- 
houn,  Stuart,  Logan,  Baker,  Treat,  Hardin,  Trumbull, 
McClernand,  Browning,  McDougall,  and  others. 

His  new  surroundings  greatly  stimulated  and  rein 
forced  Mr.  Lincoln's  growing  experience  and  spread 
ing  acquaintance,  giving  him  a  larger  share  and  wider 
influence  in  local  and  State  politics.  He  became  a  val 
ued  and  sagacious  adviser  in  party  caucuses,  and  a 
power  in  party  conventions.  Gradually,  also,  his  gifts 
as  an  attractive  and  persuasive  campaign  speaker  were 
making  themselves  felt  and  appreciated. 

His  removal,  in  April,  1837,  from  a  village  of  twenty 
houses  to  a  "city"  of  about  two  thousand  inhabitants 
placed  him  in  striking  new  relations  and  necessities  as 


FRIENDLY  HELP  53 

to  dress,  manners,  and  society,  as  well  as  politics; 
yet  here  again,  as  in  the  case  of  his  removal  from  his 
father's  cabin  to  New  Salem  six  years  before,  peculiar 
conditions  rendered  the  transition  less  abrupt  than 
would  at  first  appear.  Springfield,  notwithstand 
ing  its  greater  population  and  prospective  dignity 
as  the  capital,  was  in  many  respects  no  great  improve 
ment  on  New  Salem.  It  had  no  public  buildings,  its 
streets  and  sidewalks  were  unpaved,  its  stores,  in  spite 
of  all  their  flourish  of  advertisements,  were  stagger 
ing  under  the  hard  times  of  1837-39,  and  stagna 
tion  of  business  imposed  a  rigid  economy  on  all  classes. 
If  we  may  credit  tradition,  this  was  one  of  the  most 
serious  crises  of  Lincoln's  life.  His  intimate  friend, 
William  Butler,  related  to  the  writer  that,  having  at 
tended  a  session  of  the  legislature  at  Vandalia,  he  and 
Lincoln  returned  together  at  its  close  to  Springfield  by 
the  usual  mode  of  horseback  travel.  At  one  of  their 
stopping-places  over  night  Lincoln,  in  one  of  his  gloomy 
moods,  told  Butler  the  story  of  the  almost  hopeless 
prospects  which  lay  immediately  before  him — that  the 
session  was  over,  his  salary  all  drawn,  and  his  money 
all  spent;  that  he  had  no  resources  and  no  work;  that 
he  did  not  know  where  to  turn  to  earn  even  a  week's 
board.  Butler  bade  him  be  of  good  cheer,  and,  without 
any  formal  proposition  or  agreement,  took  him  and  his 
belongings  to  his  own  house  and  domesticated  him  there 
as  a  permanent  guest,  with  Lincoln's  tacit  compliance 
rather  than  any  definite  consent.  Later  Lincoln  shared 
a  room  and  genial  companionship,  which  ripened  into 
closest  intimacy,  in  the  store  of  his  friend  Joshua  F. 
Speed,  all  without  charge  or  expense;  and  these  bro 
therly  offerings  helped  the  young  lawyer  over  present 
necessities  which  might  otherwise  have  driven  him  to 
muscular  handiwork  at  weekly  or  monthly  wages. 


54  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

From  this  time  onward,  in  daily  conversation,  in  ar 
gument  at  the  bar,  in  political  consultation  and  discus 
sion,  Lincoln's  life  gradually  broadened  into  contact 
with  the  leading  professional  minds  of  the  growing 
State  of  Illinois.  The  man  who  could  not  pay  a  week's 
board  bill  was  twice  more  elected  to  the  legislature,  was 
invited  to  public  banquets  and  toasted  by  name,  became 
a  popular  speaker,  moved  in  the  best  society  of  the 
-new  capital,  and  made  what  was  considered  a  brilliant 
marriage. 

Lincoln's  stature  and  strength,  his  intelligence  and 
ambition — in  short,  all  the  elements  wrhich  gave  him 
popularity  among  men  in  New  Salem,  rendered  him 
equally  attractive  to  the  fair  sex  of  that  village.  On  the 
other  hand,  his  youth,  his  frank  sincerity,  his  longing 
for  sympathy  and  encouragement,  made  him  peculiarly 
sensitive  to  the  society  and  influence  of  women.  Soon 
after  coming  to  New  Salem  he  chanced  much  in  the 
society  of  Miss  Anne  Rutledge,  a  slender,  blue-eyed 
blonde,  nineteen  years  old,  moderately  educated,  beau 
tiful  according  to  local  standards — an  altogether  lovely, 
tender-hearted,  universally  admired,  and  generally  fas 
cinating  girl.  From  the  personal  descriptions  of  her 
which  tradition  has  preserved,  the  inference  is  natu 
rally  drawn  that  her  temperament  and  disposition  were 
very  much  akin  to  those  of  Mr.  Lincoln  himself.  It 
is  little  wonder,  therefore,  that  he  fell  in  love  with  her. 
But  two  years  before  she  had  become  engaged  to  a  Mr. 
McNamar,  who  had  gone  to  the  East  to  settle  certain 
family  affairs,  and  whose  absence  became  so  unac 
countably  prolonged  that  Anne  finally  despaired  of  his 
return,  and  in  time  betrothed  herself  to  Lincoln.  A 
year  or  so  after  this  event  Anne  Rutledge  was  taken 
sick  and  died — the  neighbors  said  of  a  broken  heart, 
but  the  doctor  called  it  brain  fever,  and  his  science 


MARY   OWENS  55 

was  more  likely  to  be  correct  than  their  psychology. 
Whatever  may  have  been  the  truth  upon  this  point,  the 
incident  threw  Lincoln  into  profound  grief,  and  a  pe 
riod  of  melancholy  so  absorbing  as  to  cause  his  friends 
apprehension  for  his  own  health.  Gradually,  however, 
their  studied  and  devoted  companionship  won  him  back 
to  cheerfulness,  and  his  second  affair  of  the  heart  as 
sumed  altogether  different  characteristics,  most  of 
which  may  be  gathered  from  his  own  letters. 

Two  years  before  the  death  of  Anne  Rutledge,  Mr. 
Lincoln  had  seen  and  made  the  acquaintance  of  Miss 
Mary  Owens,  who  had  come  to  visit  her  sister  Mrs. 
Able,  and  had  passed  about  four  weeks  in  New  Salem, 
after  which  she  returned  to  Kentucky.  Three  years 
later,  and  perhaps  a  year  after  Miss  Rutledge's  death, 
Mrs.  Able,  before  starting  for  Kentucky,  told  Mr.  Lin 
coln,  probably  more  in  jest  than  earnest,  that  she  would 
bring  her  sister  back  with  her  on  condition  that  he 
would  become  her — Mrs.  Abie's — brother-in-law7.  Lin 
coln,  also  probably  more  in  jest  than  earnest,  promptly 
agreed  to  the  proposition;  for  he  remembered  Mary 
Owens  as  a  tall,  handsome,  dark-haired  girl,  with  fair 
skin  and  large  blue  eyes,  who  in  conversation  could  be 
intellectual  and  serious  as  well  as  jovial  and  witty, 
who  had  a  liberal  education,  and  was  considered  weal 
thy — one  of  those  \vell-poised,  steady  characters  who 
look  upon  matrimony  and  life  with  practical  views  and 
social  matronly  instincts. 

The  bantering  offer  was  made  and  accepted  in  the 
autumn  of  1836,  and  in  the  following  April  Mr.  Lin 
coln  removed  to  Springfield.  Before  this  occurred, 
however,  he  was  surprised  to  learn  that  Mary  Owens 
had  actually  returned  with  her  sister  from  Kentucky, 
and  felt  that  the  romantic  jest  had  become  a  serious 
and  practical  question.  Their  first  interview  dissipated 


56  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

some  of  the  illusions  in  which  each  had  indulged.  The 
three  years  elapsed  since  they  first  met  had  greatly 
changed  her  personal  appearance.  She  had  become 
stout;  her  twenty-eight  years  (one  year  more  than  his) 
had  somewhat  hardened  the  lines  of  her  face.  Both  in 
figure  and  feature  she  presented  a  disappointing  con 
trast  to  the  slim  and  not  yet  totally  forgotten  Anne 
Rutledge. 

On  her  part,  it  was  more  than  likely  that  she  did  not 
find  in  him  all  the  attractions  her  sister  had  pictured. 
The  speech  and  manners  of  the  Illinois  frontier  lacked 
much  of  the  chivalric  attentions  and  flattering  com 
pliments  to  which  the  Kentucky  beaux  were  addicted. 
He  was  yet  a  diamond  in  the  rough,  and  she  would  not 
immediately  decide  till  she  could  better  understand  his 
character  and  prospects,  so  no  formal  engagement  re 
sulted. 

In  December,  Lincoln  went  to  his  legislative  duties 
at  Vandalia,  and  in  the  following  April  took  up  his 
permanent  abode  in  Springfield.  Such  a  separation  was 
not  favorable  to  rapid  courtship,  yet  they  had  occasional 
interviews  and  exchanged  occasional  letters.  None 
of  hers  to  him  have  been  preserved,  and  only  three  of 
his  to  her.  From  these  it  appears  that  they  sometimes 
discussed  their  affair  in  a  cold,  hypothetical  way,  even 
down  to  problems  of  housekeeping,  in  the  light  of  mere 
worldly  prudence,  much  as  if  they  were  guardians  ar 
ranging  a  manage  de  convenance,  rather  than  impul 
sive  and  ardent  lovers  wandering  in  Arcady.  Without 
Miss  Owens's  letters  it  is  impossible  to  know  what  she 
may  have  said  to  him,  but  in  May,  1837,  Lincoln  wrote 
to  her : 

"I  am  often  thinking  of  what  we  said  about  your 
coming  to  live  at  Springfield.  I  am  afraid  you  would 
not  be  satisfied.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  flourishing 


MARY   OWENS  57 

about  in  carriages  here,  which  it  would  be  your  doom 
to  see  without  sharing  it.  You  would  have  to  be  poor, 
without  the  means  of  hiding  your  poverty.  Do  you  be 
lieve  you  could  bear  that  patiently?  Whatever  woman 
may  cast  her  lot  with  mine,  should  any  ever  do  so,  it 
is  my  intention  to  do  all  in  my  power  to  make  her  happy 
and  contented ;  and  there  is  nothing  I  can  imagine  that 
would  make  me  more  unhappy  than  to  fail  in  the  effort. 
I  know  I  should  be  much  happier  with  you  than  the 
way  I  am,  provided  I  saw  no  signs  of  discontent  in 
you.  What  you  have  said  to  me  may  have  been  in  the 
way  of  jest,  or  I  may  have  misunderstood  it.  If  so, 
then  let  it  be  forgotten ;  if  otherwise,  I  much  wish  you 
would  think  seriously  before  you  decide.  What  I  have 
said  I  will  most  positively  abide  by,  provided  you  wish 
it.  My  opinion  is  that  you  had  better  not  do  it.  You 
have  not  been  accustomed  to  hardship,  and  it  may  be 
more  severe  than  you  now  imagine.  I  know  you  are 
capable  of  thinking  correctly  on  any  subject,  and  if 
you  deliberate  maturely  upon  this  before  you  decide, 
then  I  am  willing  to  abide  your  decision." 

Whether,  after  receiving  this,  she  wrote  him  the 
"good  long  letter"  he  asked  for  in  the  same  epistle  is 
not  known.  Apparently  they  did  not  meet  again  until 
August,  and  the  interview  must  have  been  marked  by 
reserve  and  coolness  on  both  sides,  which  left  each  more 
uncertain  than  before;  for  on  the  same  day  Lincoln 
again  wrote  her,  and,  after  saying  that  she  might  per 
haps  be  mistaken  in  regard  to  his  real  feelings  toward 
her,  continued  thus : 

"I  want  in  all  cases  to  do  right,  and  most  particu 
larly  so  in  all  cases  with  women.  I  want  at  this  par 
ticular  time,  more  than  anything  else,  to  do  right  with 
you ;  and  if  I  knew  it  would  be  doing  right,  as  I  rather 
suspect  it  would,  to  let  you  alone,  I  would  do  it.  And 


58  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

for  the  purpose  of  making  the  matter  as  plain  as  pos 
sible,  I  now  say  that  you  can  now  drop  the  subject,  dis 
miss  your  thoughts  (if  you  ever  had  any)  from  me  for 
ever,  and  leave  this  letter  unanswered,  without  calling 
forth  one  accusing  murmur  from  me.  And  I  will  even 
go  further,  and  say  that  if  it  will  add  anything  to  your 
comfort  or  peace  of  mind  to  do  so,  it  is  my  sincere  wish 
that  you  should.  Do  not  understand  by  this  that  I  wish 
to  cut  your  acquaintance.  I  mean  no  such  thing. 
What  I  do  wish  is  that  our  further  acquaintance  shall 
depend  upon  yourself.  If  such  further  acquaintance 
would  contribute  nothing  to  your  happiness,  I  am  sure 
it  would  not  to  mine.  If  you  feel  yourself  in  any  de 
gree  bound  to  me,  I  am  now  willing  to  release  you, 
provided  you  wish  it;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  I  am 
willing  and  even  anxious  to  bind  you  faster,  if  I  can 
be  convinced  that  it  will  in  any  considerable  degree  add 
to  your  happiness.  This,  indeed,  is  the  whole  question 
with  me." 

All  that  we  know  of  the  sequel  is  contained  in  a  let 
ter  which  Lincoln  wrote  to  his  friend  Mrs.  Browning 
nearly  a  year  later,  after  Miss  Owens  had  finally  re 
turned  to  Kentucky,  in  which,  without  mentioning  the 
lady's  name,  he  gave  a  seriocomic  description  of  what 
might  be  called  a  courtship  to  escape  matrimony.  He 
dwells  on  his  disappointment  at  her  changed  appear 
ance,  and  continues : 

"But  what  could  I  do?  I  had  told  her  sister  that  I 
would  take  her  for  better  or  for  worse,  and  I  made  a 
point  of  honor  and  conscience  in  all  things  to  stick  to 
my  word,  especially  if  others  had  been  induced  to  act 
on  it,  which  in  this  case  I  had  no  doubt  they  had ;  for  I 
was  now  fairly  convinced  that  no  other  man  on  earth 
would  have  her,  and  hence  the  conclusion  that  they 
were  bent  on  holding  me  to  my  bargain.  'Well/ 


MARY   OWENS  59 

thought  I,  'I  have  said  it,  and,  be  the  consequences 
what  they  may,  it  shall  not  be  my  fault  if  I  fail  to  do 
it.'  .  .  .  All  this  while,  although  I  was  fixed  'firm 
as  the  surge-repelling  rock'  in  my  resolution,  I  found 
I  was  continually  repenting  the  rashness  which  had 
led  me  to  make  it.  Through  life  I  have  been  in  no 
bondage,  either  real  or  imaginary,  from  the  thraldom 
of  which  I  so  much  desired  to  be  free.  .  .  .  After 
I  had  delayed  the  matter  as  long  as  I  thought  I  could 
in  honor  do  ( which,  by  the  way,  had  brought  me  round 
into  last  fall),  I  concluded  I  might  as  well  bring  it  to 
a  consummation  without  further  delay,  and  so  I  mus 
tered  my  resolution  and  made  the  proposal  to  her  direct ; 
but,  shocking  to  relate,  she  answered,  No.  At  first  I 
supposed  she  did  it  through  an  affectation  of  modesty, 
which  I  thought  but  ill  became  her  under  the  peculiar 
circumstances  of  her  case,  but  on  my  renewal  of  the 
charge  I  found  she  repelled  it  with  greater  firmness 
than  before.  I  tried  it  again  and  again,  but  with  the 
same  success,  or  rather  with  the  same  want  of  success. 
I  finally  was  forced  to  give  it  up,  at  which  I  very  unex 
pectedly  found  myself  mortified  almost  beyond  endur 
ance.  I  was  mortified,  it  seemed  to  me,  in  a  hundred 
different  ways.  My  vanity  was  deeply  wounded  by 
the  reflection  that  I  had  so  long  been  too  stupid  to  dis 
cover  her  intentions,  and  at  the  same  time  never  doubt 
ing  that  I  understood  them  perfectly ;  and  also  that  she, 
whom  I  had  taught  myself  to  believe  nobody  else  would 
have,  had  actually  rejected  me  with  all  my  fancied 
greatness.  And,  to  cap  the  whole,  I  then  for  the  first 
time  began  to  suspect  that  I  was  really  a  little  in  love 
with  her." 

The  serious  side  of  this  letter  is  undoubtedly  genuine 
and  candid,  while  the  somewhat  over-exaggeration  of 
the  comic  side  points  as  clearly  that  he  had  not  fully 


60  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

recovered  from  the  mental  suffering  he  had  undergone 
in  the  long  conflict  between  doubt  and  duty.  From  the 
beginning,  the  match-making  zeal  of  the  sister  had 
placed  the  parties  in  a  false  position,  produced  embar 
rassment,  and  created  distrust.  A  different  beginning 
might  have  resulted  in  a  very  different  outcome,  for 
Lincoln,  while  objecting  to  her  corpulency,  acknow 
ledges  that  in  both  feature  and  intellect  she  was  as  at 
tractive  as  any  woman  he  had  ever  met;  and  Miss 
Owens's  letters,  written  after  his  death,  state  that  her 
principal  objection  lay  in  the  fact  that  his  training  had 
been  different  from  hers,  and  that  "Mr.  Lincoln  was 
deficient  in  those  little  links  which  make  up  the  chain 
of  a  woman's  happiness."  She  adds:  "The  last  mes 
sage  I  ever  received  from  him  was  about  a  year  after 
we  parted  in  Illinois.  Mrs.  Able  visited  Kentucky,  and 
he  said  to  her  in  Springfield,  'Tell  your  sister  that  I 
think  she  was  a  great  fool  because  she  did  not  stay  here 
and  marry  me.' '  She  was  even  then  not  quite  clear 
in  her  own  mind  but  that  his  words  were  true. 


Springfield  Society — Miss  Mary  Todd — Lincoln's  En 
gagement — His  Deep  Despondency — Visit  to  Ken 
tucky — Letters  to  Speed — The  Shields  Duel — Marriage 
— Law  Partnership  with  Logan — Hardin  Nominated 
for  Congress,  1843 — Baker  Nominated  for  Congress, 
1844 — Lincoln  Nominated  and  Elected,  1846 

THE  deep  impression  which  the  Mary  Owens  affair 
made  upon  Lincoln  is  further  shown  by  one  of 
the  concluding  phrases  of  his  letter  to  Mrs.  Browning : 
"I  have  now  come  to  the  conclusion  never  again  to 
think  of  marrying."  But  it  was  not  long  before  a  reac 
tion  set  in  from  this  pessimistic  mood.  The  actual 
transfer  of  the  seat  of  government  from  Vandalia  to 
Springfield  in  1839  gave  the  new  capital  fresh  anima 
tion.  Business  revived,  public  improvements  were  be 
gun,  politics  ran  high.  Already  there  was  a  spirit  in 
the  air  that  in  the  following  year  culminated  in  the 
extraordinary  enthusiasm  and  fervor  of  the  Harrison 
presidential  campaign  of  1840,  that  rollicking  and  up 
roarious  party  carnival  of  humor  and  satire,  of  song 
and  jollification,  of  hard  cider  and  log  cabins.  While 
the  State  of  Illinois  was  strongly  Democratic,  Sanga- 
mon  County  was  as  distinctly  Whig,  and  the  local 
party  disputes  were  hot  and  aggressive.  The  Whig 
delegation  of  Sangamon  in  the  legislature,  popularly 
called  the  "Long  Nine,"  because  the  sum  of  the  stature 
of  its  members  was  fifty-four  feet,  became  noted  for 
its  influence  in  legislation  in  a  body  where  the  majority 

61 


62  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

was  against  them;  and  of  these  Mr.  Lincoln  was  the 
"tallest"  both  in  person  and  ability,  as  was  recognized 
by  his  twice  receiving  the  minority  vote  for  Speaker 
of  the  House. 

Society  also  began  organizing  itself  upon  metropoli 
tan  rather  than  provincial  assumptions.  As  yet,  how 
ever,  society  was  liberal.  Men  of  either  wealth  or  po 
sition  were  still  too  few  to  fill  its  ranks.  Energy,  ambi 
tion,  talent,  were  necessarily  the  standard  of  admis 
sion  ;  and  Lincoln,  though  poor  as  a  church  mouse,  was 
as  welcome  as  those  who  could  wear  ruffled  shirts  and 
carry  gold  watches.  The  meetings  of  the  legislature  at 
Springfield  then  first  brought  together  that  splendid 
group  of  young  men  of  genius  whose  phenomenal  ca 
reers  and  distinguished  services  have  given  Illinois 
fame  in  the  history  of  the  nation.  It  is  a  marked  pe 
culiarity  of  the  American  character  that  the  bitterest 
foes  in  party  warfare  generally  meet  each  other  on 
terms  of  perfect  social  courtesy  in  the  drawing-rooms 
of  society;  and  future  presidential  candidates,  cabinet 
members,  senators,  congressmen,  jurists,  orators,  and 
battle  heroes  lent  the  little  social  reunions  of  Spring 
field  a  zest  and  exaltation  never  found — perhaps  impos 
sible — amid  the  heavy,  oppressive  surroundings  of 
conventional  ceremony,  gorgeous  upholstery,  and  mag 
nificent  decorations. 

It  was  at  this  period  also  that  Lincoln  began  to  feel 
and  exercise  his  expanding  influence  and  powers  as  a 
writer  and  speaker.  Already,  two  years  earlier,  he 
had  written  and  delivered  before  the  Young  Men's 
Lyceum  of  Springfield  an  able  address  upon  "The  Per 
petuation  of  Our  Political  Institutions,"  strongly  en 
forcing  the  doctrine  of  rigid  obedience  to  law.  In 
December,  1839,  Douglas,  in  a  heated  conversation, 
challenged  the  young  Whigs  present  to  a  political  dis- 


MISS  MARY  TODD  63 

cussion.  The  challenge  was  immediately  taken  up,  and 
the  public  of  Springfield  listened  with  eager  interest  to 
several  nights  of  sharp  debate  between  Whig  and  Dem 
ocratic  champions,  in  which  Lincoln  bore  a  prominent 
and  successful  share.  In  the  following  summer,  Lin 
coln's  name  was  placed  upon  the  Harrison  electoral 
ticket  for  Illinois,  and  he  lent  all  his  zeal  and  eloquence 
to  swell  the  general  popular  enthusiasm  for  "Tippe- 
canoe  and  Tyler  too." 

In  the  midst  of  this  political  and  social  awakening 
of  the  new  capital  and  the  quickened  interest  and  high 
hopes  of  leading  citizens  gathered  there  from  all  parts 
of  the  State,  there  came  into  the  Springfield  circles 
Miss  Mary  Todd  of  Kentucky,  twenty-one  years  old, 
handsome,  accomplished,  vivacious,  witty,  a  dashing 
and  fascinating  figure  in  dress  and  conversation,  gra 
cious  and  imperious  by  turns.  She  easily  singled  out 
and  secured  the  admiration  of  such  of  the  Springfield 
beaux  as  most  pleased  her  somewhat  capricious  fancy. 
She  was  a  sister  of  Mrs.  Ninian  W.  Edwards,  whose 
husband  was  one  of  the  "Long  Nine."  This  circum 
stance  made  Lincoln  a  frequent  visitor  at  the  Edwards 
house;  and,  being  thus  much  thrown  in  her  company, 
he  found  himself,  almost  before  he  knew  it,  entangled 
in  a  new  love  affair,  and  in  the  course  of  a  twelvemonth 
engaged  to  marry  her. 

Much  to  the  surprise  of  Springfield  society,  however, 
the  courtship  took  a  sudden  turn.  Whether  it  was 
caprice  or  jealousy,  a  new  attachment,  or  mature  re 
flection  will  always  remain  a  mystery.  Every  such 
case  is  a  law  unto  itself,  and  neither  science  nor  poetry 
is  ever  able  to  analyze  and  explain  its  causes  and 
effects.  The  conflicting  stories  then  current,  and  the 
varying  traditions  that  yet  exist,  either  fail  to  agree  or 
to  fit  the  sparse  facts  which  came  to  light.  There  re- 


64  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

mains  no  dispute,  however,  that  the  occurrence,  what 
ever  shape  it  took,  threw  Mr.  Lincoln  into  a  deeper 
despondency  than  any  he  had  yet  experienced,  for  on 
January  23,  1841,  he  wrote  to  his  law  partner,  John  T. 
Stuart : 

"For  not  giving  you  a  general  summary  of  news 
you  must  pardon  me;  it  is  not  in  my  power  to  do  so. 
I  am  now  the  most  miserable  man  living.  If  what  I 
feel  were  equally  distributed  to  the  whole  human  fam 
ily,  there  would  not  be  one  cheerful  face  on  earth. 
Whether  I  shall  ever  be  better,  I  cannot  tell ;  I  awTf ully 
forebode  I  shall  not.  To  remain  as  I  am  is  impossible ; 
I  must  die  or  be  better." 

Apparently  his  engagement  to  Miss  Todd  was  broken 
off,  but  whether  that  was  the  result  or  the  cause  of  his 
period  of  gloom  seems  still  a  matter  of  conjecture. 
His  mind  was  so  perturbed  that  he  felt  unable  to  attend 
the  sessions  of  the  legislature  of  which  he  was  a  mem 
ber;  and  after  its  close  his  intimate  friend  Joshua  F. 
Speed  carried  him  off  for  a  visit  to  Kentucky.  The 
change  of  scene  and  surroundings  proved  of  great  bene 
fit.  He  returned  home  about  midsummer  very  much 
improved,  but  not  yet  completely  restored  to  a  natural 
mental  equipoise.  While  on  their  visit  to  Kentucky, 
Speed  had  likewise  fallen  in  love,  and  in  the  following 
winter  had  become  afflicted  with  doubts  and  perplex 
ities  akin  to  those  from  which  Lincoln  had  suffered. 
It  now  became  his  turn  to  give  sympathy  and  counsel 
to  his  friend,  and  he  did  this  with  a  warmth  and  deli 
cacy  born  of  his  own  spiritual  trials,  not  yet  entirely 
overmastered.  He  wrote  letter  after  letter  to  Speed 
to  convince  him  that  his  doubts  about  not  truly  loving 
the  woman  of  his  choice  were  all  nonsense. 

"Why,  Speed,  if  you  did  not  love  her,  although  you 
might  not  wish  her  death,  you  would  most  certainly 


LETTERS  TO  SPEED  65 

be  resigned  to  it.  Perhaps  this  point  is  no  longer  a 
question  with  you,  and  my  pertinacious  dwelling  upon 
it  is  a  rude  intrusion  upon  your  feelings.  If  so,  you 
must  pardon  me.  You  know  the  hell  I  have  suffered 
on  that  point,  and  how  tender  I  am  upon  it.  ... 
I  am  now  fully  convinced  that  you  love  her  as  ardently 
as  you  are  capable  of  loving.  .  .  .  It  is  the  pecu 
liar  -misfortune  of  both  you  and  me  to  dream  dreams 
of  Elysium  far  exceeding  all  that  anything  earthly  can 
realize." 

When  Lincoln  heard  that  Speed  was  finally  married, 
he  wrote  him : 

"It  cannot  be  told  how  it  now  thrills  me  writh  joy  to 
hear  you  say  you  are  'far  happier  than  you  ever  ex 
pected  to  be.'  That  much,  I  know,  is  enough.  I  know 
you  too  well  to  suppose  your  expectations  were  not, 
at  least,  sometimes  extravagant;  and  if  the  reality  ex 
ceeds  them  all,  I  say,  Enough,  dear  Lord.  I  am  not 
going  beyond  the  truth  when  I  tell  you  that  the  short 
space  it  took  me  to  read  your  last  letter  gave  me  more 
pleasure  than  the  total  sum  of  all  I  have  enjoyed  since 
the  fatal  first  of  January,  1841.  Since  then  it  seems  to 
me  I  should  have  been  entirely  happy,  but  for  the  never- 
absent  idea  that  there  is  one  still  unhappy  whom  I  have 
contributed  to  make  so.  That  still  kills  my  soul.  I 
cannot  but  reproach  myself  for  even  wishing  to  be 
happy  while  she  is  otherwise." 

It  is  quite  possible  that  a  series  of  incidents  that 
occurred  during  the  summer  in  which  the  above  was 
written  had  something  to  do  with  bringing  such  a  frame 
of  mind  to  a  happier  conclusion.  James  Shields,  after 
ward  a  general  in  two  wars  and  a  senator  from  two 
States,  was  at  that  time  auditor  of  Illinois,  with  his 
office  at  Springfield.  Shields  was  an  Irishman  by 
birth,  and,  for  an  active  politician  of  the  Democratic 


66  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

party,  had  the  misfortune  to  be  both  sensitive  and  iras 
cible  in  party  warfare.  Shields,  together  with  the 
Democratic  governor  and  treasurer,  issued  a  circular 
order  forbidding  the  payment  of  taxes  in  the  depre 
ciated  paper  of  the  Illinois  State  banks,  and  the  Whigs 
were  endeavoring  to  make  capital  by  charging  that 
the  order  was  issued  for  the  purpose  of  bringing  enough 
silver  into  the  treasury  to  pay  the  salaries  of  these 
officials.  Using  this  as  a  basis  of  argument,  a  couple 
of  clever  Springfield  society  girls  wrote  and  printed 
in  the  "Sangamo  Journal"  a  series  of  humorous  let 
ters  in  country  dialect,  purporting  to  come  from  the 
"Lost  Townships,"  and  signed  by  "Aunt  Rebecca," 
who  called  herself  a  farmer's  widow.  It  is  hardly  ne 
cessary  to  say  that  Mary  Todd  was  one  of  the  culprits. 
The  young  ladies  originated  the  scheme  more  to  poke 
fun  at  the  personal  weaknesses  of  Shields  than  for  the 
sake  of  party  effect,  and  they  embellished  their  simu 
lated  plaint  about  taxes  with  an  embroidery  of  fictitious 
social  happenings  and  personal  allusions  to  the  auditor 
that  put  the  town  on  a  grin  and  Shields  into  fury. 
The  fair  and  mischievous  writers  found  it  necessary 
to  consult  Lincoln  about  how  they  should  frame  the 
political  features  of  their  attack,  and  he  set  them  a  pat 
tern  by  writing  the  first  letter  of  the  series  himself. 

Shields  sent  a  friend  to  the  editor  of  the  "Journal," 
and  demanded  the  name  of  the  real  "Rebecca."  The 
editor,  as  in  duty  bound,  asked  Lincoln  what  he  should 
do,  and  was  instructed  to  give  Lincoln's  name,  and 
not  to  mention  the  ladies.  Then  followed  a  letter  from 
Shields  to  Lincoln  demanding  retraction  and  apology, 
Lincoln's  reply  that  he  declined  to  answer  under  men 
ace,  and  a  challenge  from  Shields.  Thereupon  Lin 
coln  instructed  his  "friend"  as  follows :  If  former 
offensive  correspondence  were  withdrawn  and  a  polite 


THE  SHIELDS  DUEL  67 

and  gentlemanly  inquiry  made,  he  was  willing  to  ex 
plain  that : 

"I  did  write  the  'Lost  Townships'  letter  which  ap 
peared  in  the  'Journal'  of  the  2d  instant,  but  had  no 
participation  in  any  form  in  any  other  article  alluding 
to  you.  I  wrote  that  wholly  for  political  effect;  I  had 
no  intention  of  injuring  your  personal  or  private  char 
acter  or  standing  as  a  man  or  a  gentleman;  and  I  did 
not  then  think,  and  do  not  now  think,  that  that  article 
could  produce  or  has  produced  that  effect  against  you, 
and  had  I  anticipated  such  an  effect  I  would  have  for 
borne  to  write  it.  And  I  will  add  that  your  conduct 
toward  me,  so  far  as  I  know,  had  always  been  gentle 
manly,  and  that  I  had  no  personal  pique  against  you 
and  no  cause  for  any.  ...  If  nothing  like  this  is 
done,  the  preliminaries  of  the  fight  are  to  be : 

"First.  Weapons  :  Cavalry  broadswords  of  the  larg 
est  size,  precisely  equal  in  all  respects,  and  such  as  now 
used  by  the  cavalry  company  at  Jacksonville. 

"Second.  Position :  A  plank  ten  feet  long,  and  from 
nine  to  twelve  inches  broad,  to  be  firmly  fixed  on  edge, 
on  the  ground,  as  the  line  between  us,  which  neither 
is  to  pass  his  foot  over  upon  forfeit  of  his  life.  Next, 
a  line  drawn  on  the  ground  on  either  side  of  said  plank 
and  parallel  with  it,  each  at  the  distance  of  the  whole 
length  of  the  sword  and  three  feet  additional  from  the 
plank,  and  the  passing  of  his  own  such  line  by  either 
party  during  the  fight  shall  be  deemed  a  surrender  of 
the  contest." 

The  two  seconds  met,  and,  with  great  unction,  pledged 
"our  honor  to  each  other  that  we  would  endeavor  to  set 
tle  the  matter  amicably,"  but  persistently  higgled  over 
points  till  publicity  and  arrests  seemed  imminent.  Pro 
curing  the  necessary  broadswords,  all  parties  then  hur 
ried  away  to  an  island  in  the  Mississippi  River  opposite 


68  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Alton,  where,  long  before  the  planks  were  set  on  edge 
or  the  swords  drawn,  mutual  friends  took  the  case  out 
of  the  hands  of  the  seconds  and  declared  an  adjustment. 
The  terms  of  the  fight  as  written  by  Mr.  Lincoln  show 
plainly  enough  that  in  his  judgment  it  was  to  be  treated 
as  a  farce,  and  would  never  proceed  beyond  "prelimi 
naries."  There,  of  course,  ensued  the  usual  very  belli 
cose  after-discussion  in  the  newspapers,  with  additional 
challenges  between  the  seconds  about  the  proper  eti 
quette  of  such  farces,  all  resulting  only  in  the  shedding 
of  much  ink  and  furnishing  Springfield  with  topics  of 
lively  conversation  for  a  month.  These  occurrences, 
naturally  enough,  again  drew  Mr.  Lincoln  and  Miss 
Todd  together  in  friendly  interviews,  and  Lincoln's 
letter  to  Speed  detailing  the  news  of  the  duels  contains 
this  significant  paragraph : 

"But  I  began  this  letter  not  for  what  I  have  been 
writing,  but  to  say  something  on  that  subject  which 
you  know  to  be  of  such  infinite  solicitude  to  me.  The 
immense  sufferings  you  endured  from  the  first  days 
of  September  till  the  middle  of  February  you  never  tried 
to  conceal  from  me,  and  I  well  understood.  You  have 
now  been  the  husband  of  a  lovely  woman  nearly  eight 
months.  That  you  are  happier  now  than  the  day  you 
married  her  I  well  know,  for  without  you  could  not  be 
living.  But  I  have  your  word  for  it  too,  and  the  re 
turning  elasticity  of  spirits  which  is  manifested  in  your 
letters.  But  I  want  to  ask  a  close  question.  'Are  you 
now  in  feeling  as  well  as  judgment  glad  that  you  are 
married  as  you  are  ?'  From  anybody  but  me  this 
would  be  an  impudent  question  not  to  be  tolerated,  but 
I  know  you  will  pardon  it  in  me.  Please  answer  it 
quickly,  as  I  am  impatient  to  know." 

The  answer  was  evidently  satisfactory,  for  on  No 
vember  4,  1842,  the  Rev.  Charles  Dresser  united  Abra- 


MARRIAGE  69 

ham  Lincoln  and  Mary  Todd  in  the  holy  bonds  of 
matrimony.1 

His  marriage  to  Miss  Todd  ended  all  those  mental 
perplexities  and  periods  of  despondency  from  which  he 
had  suffered  more  or  less  during  his  several  love  af 
fairs,  extending  over  nearly  a  decade.  Out  of  the 
keen  anguish  he  had  endured,  he  finally  gained  that 
perfect  mastery  over  his  own  spirit  which  Scripture 
declares  to  denote  a  greatness  superior  to  that  of  him 
who  takes  a  city.  Few  men  have  ever  attained  that 
complete  domination  of  the  will  over  the  emotions,  of 
reason  over  passion,  by  which  he  was  able  in  the  years 
to  come  to  meet  and  solve  the  tremendous  questions 
destiny  had  in  store  for  him.  His  wedding  once  over, 
he  took  up  with  resolute  patience  the  hard,  practical 
routine  of  daily  life,  in  which  he  had  already  been  so 
severely  schooled.  Even  his  sentimental  correspon 
dence  with  his  friend  Speed  lapsed  into  neglect.  He 
was  so  poor  that  he  and  his  bride  could  not  make  the 
contemplated  visit  to  Kentucky  they  would  both  have 
so  much  enjoyed.  His  "national  debt"  of  the  old  New 
Salem  days  was  not  yet  fully  paid  off.  "We  are  not 
keeping  house,  but  boarding  at  the  Globe  tavern,"  he 
writes.  "Our  room  .  .  .  and  boarding  only  cost 
us  four  dollars  a  week." 

His  law  partnership  with  Stuart  had  lasted  four 
years,  but  was  dissolved  by  reason  of  Stuart's  election 


1  The  following  children  were  Lincoln,  in  Springfield,  July  16, 

born  of  this  marriage:  1882. 

Robert  Todd,  August  I,  1843 ;  Robert,  who  filled  the  office  of 

Edward  Baker,  March  10,  1846;  Secretary  of  War  with  distinction 

William  Wallace,  December  21,  under  the  administrations  of  Presi- 

1850;  Thomas,  April  4,  1853.  dents  Garfield  and  Arthur,  as  well 

Edward  died  in  infancy  ;  William  as  that  of  minister  to  England 

in  the  White  House,  February  20,  under  the  administration  of  Presi- 

1862;  Thomas  in  Chicago,  July  dent  Harrison,  now  resides  in  Chi- 

15,  1871 ;  and  the  mother,  Mary  cago,  Illinois. 


70  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

to  Congress,  and  a  new  one  was  formed  with  Judge 
Stephen  T.  Logan,  who  had  recently  resigned  from  the 
circuit  bench,  where  he  had  learned  the  quality  and 
promise  of  Lincoln's  talents.  It  was  an  opportune  and 
important  change.  Stuart  had  devoted  himself  mainly 
to  politics,  while  with  Logan  law  was  the  primary  ob 
ject.  Under  Logan's  guidance  and  encouragement,  he 
took  up  both  the  study  and  practical  work  of  the  pro 
fession  in  a  more  serious  spirit.  Lincoln's  interest  in 
politics,  however,  was  in  no  way  diminished,  and,  in 
truth,  his  limited  practice  at  that  date  easily  afforded 
him  the  time  necessary  for  both. 

Since  1840  he  had  declined  a  reelection  to  the'legis- 
lature,  and  his  ambition  had  doubtless  contributed 
much  to  this  decision.  His  late  law  partner,  Stuart, 
had  been  three  times  a  candidate  for  Congress.  He 
was  defeated  in  1836,  but  successfully  gained  his  elec 
tion  in  1838  and  1840,  his  service  of  two  terms  ex 
tending  from  December  2,  1839,  to  March  3,  1843. 
For  some  reason,  the  next  election  had  been  postponed 
from  the  year  1842  to  1843.  I*  was  but  natural  that 
Stuart's  success  should  excite  a  similar  desire  in  Lin 
coln,  who  had  reached  equal  party  prominence,  and 
rendered  even  more  conspicuous  party  service.  Lin 
coln  had  profited  greatly  by  the  companionship  and 
friendly  emulation  of  the  many  talented  young  poli 
ticians  of  Springfield,  but  this  same  condition  also  in 
creased  competition  and  stimulated  rivalry.  Not  only 
himself,  but  both  Hardin  and  Baker  desired  the  nomi 
nation,  which,  as  the  district  then  stood,  was  equivalent 
to  an  election. 

When  the  leading  Whigs  of  Sangamon  County  met, 
Lincoln  was  under  the  impression  that  it  was  Baker 
and  not  Hardin  who  was  his  most  dangerous  rival, 
as  appears  in  a  letter  to  Speed  of  March  24,  1843  : 


CONGRESSIONAL    NOMINATIONS        71 

"We  had  a  meeting  of  the  Whigs  of  the  county  here 
on  last  Monday  to  appoint  delegates  to  a  district  con 
vention,  and  Baker  beat  me  and  got  the  delegation  in 
structed  to  go  for  him.  The  meeting,  in  spite  of  my 
attempt  to  decline  it,  appointed  me  one  of  the  delegates, 
so  that  in  getting  Baker  the  nomination  I  shall  be  fixed 
a  good  deal  like  a  fellow  who  is  made  groomsman  to  a 
man  that  has  cut  him  out  and  is  marrying  his  own  dear 
'gal.' 

The  causes  that  led  to  his  disappointment  are  set  forth 
more  in  detail  in  a  letter,  two  days  later,  to  a  friend 
in  the  new  county  of  Menard,  which  now  included 
his  old  home,  New  Salem,  whose  powerful  assistance 
was  therefore  lost  from  the  party  councils  of  Sanga- 
mon.  The  letter  also  dwells  more  particularly  on  the 
complicated  influences  which  the  practical  politician 
has  to  reckon  with,  and  shows  that  even  his  marriage 
had  been  used  to  turn  popular  opinion  against  him. 

"It  is  truly  gratifying  to  me  to  learn  that  while  the 
people  of  Sangamon  have  cast  me  off,  my  old  friends 
of  Menard,  who  have  known  me  longest  and  best,  stick 
to  me.  It  would  astonish,  if  not  amuse,  the  older  citi 
zens  to  learn  that  I  (a  stranger,  friendless,  uneducated, 
penniless  boy,  working  on  a  flatboat  at  ten  dollars  per 
month)  have  been  put  down  here  as  the  candidate  of 
pride,  wealth,  and  aristocratic  family  distinction.  Yet 
so,  chiefly,  it  was.  There  was,  too,  the  strangest  com 
bination  of  church  influence  against  me.  Baker  is  a 
Campbellite,  and  therefore,  as  I  suppose,  with  few  ex 
ceptions,  got  all  that  church.  My  wife  has  some  rela 
tions  in  the  Presbyterian  churches  and  some  with  the 
Episcopal  churches;  and  therefore,  wherever  it  would 
tell,  I  was  set  down  as  either  the  one  or  the  other,  while 
it  was  everywhere  contended  that  no  Christian  ought 
to  go  for  me,  because  I  belonged  to  no  church,  was 


72  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

suspected  of  being  a  deist,  and  had  talked  about  fight 
ing  a  duel.  With  all  these  things,  Baker  of  course  had 
nothing  to  do.  Nor  do  I  complain  of  them.  As  to  his 
own  church  going  for  him,  I  think  that  was  right 
enough,  and  as  to  the  influences  I  have  spoken  of  in 
the  other,  though  they  were  very  strong,  it  would  be 
grossly  untrue  and  unjust  to  charge  that  they  acted 
upon  them  in  a  body,  or  were  very  near  so.  I  only 
mean  that  those  influences  levied  a  tax  of  a  considerable 
per  cent,  upon  my  strength  throughout  the  religious 
community." 

In  the  same  letter  we  have  a  striking  illustration  of 
Lincoln's  intelligence  and  skill  in  the  intricate  details 
of  political  management,  together  with  the  high  sense 
of  honor  and  manliness  which  directed  his  action  in 
such  matters.  Speaking  of  the  influences  of  Menard 
County,  he  wrote : 

"If  she  and  Mason  act  circumspectly,  they  will  in  the 
convention  be  able  so  far  to  enforce  their  rights  as  to 
decide  absolutely  which  one  of  the  candidates  shall  be 
successful.  Let  me  show  the  reason  of  this.  Hardin, 
or  some  other  Morgan  candidate,  will  get  Putnam, 
Marshall,  Woodford,  Tazewell,  and  Logan  [counties], 
making  sixteen.  Then  you  and  Mason,  having  three, 
can  give  the  victory  to  either  side.  You  say  you  shall 
instruct  your  delegates  for  me,  unless  I  object.  I  cer 
tainly  shall  not  object.  That  would  be  too  pleasant  a 
compliment  for  me  to  tread  in  the  dust.  And,  besides, 
if  anything  should  happen  (which,  however,  is  not 
probable)  by  which  Baker  should  be  thrown  out  of 
the  fight,  I  would  be  at  liberty  to  accept  the  nomina 
tion  if  I  could  get  it.  I  do,  however,  feel  myself  bound 
not  to  hinder  him  in  any  way  from  getting  the  nomi 
nation.  I  should  despise  myself  were  I  to  attempt  it. 
I  think,  then,  it  would  be  proper  for  your  meeting  to 


BAKER   NOMINATED  73 

appoint  three  delegates,  and  to  instruct  them  to  go  for 
some  one  as  a  first  choice,  some  one  else  as  a  second, 
and  perhaps  some  one  as  a  third ;  and  if  in  those  in 
structions  I  were  named  as  the  first  choice  it  would 
gratify  me  very  much.  If  you  wish  to  hold  the  bal 
ance  of  power,  it  is  important  for  you  to  attend  to  and 
secure  the  vote  of  Mason  also." 

A  few  weeks  again  changed  the  situation,  of  which 
he  informed  Speed  in  a  letter  dated  May  18: 

"In  relation  to  our  Congress  matter  here,  you  were 
right  in  supposing  I  would  support  the  nominee.  Nei 
ther  Baker  nor  I,  however,  is  the  man — but  Hardin, 
so  far  as  I  can  judge  from  present  appearances.  We 
shall  have  no  split  or  trouble  about  the  matter;  all  will 
be  harmony." 

In  the  following  year  (1844)  Lincoln  was  once 
more  compelled  to  exercise  his  patience.  The  Camp- 
bellite  friends  of  Baker  must  have  again  been  very  ac 
tive  in  behalf  of  their  church  favorite;  for  their  influ 
ence,  added  to  his  dashing  politics  and  eloquent  oratory, 
appears  to  have  secured  him  the  nomination  without 
serious  contention,  while  Lincoln  found  a  partial  rec 
ompense  in  being  nominated  a  candidate  for  presiden 
tial  elector,  which  furnished  him  opportunity  for  all 
his  party  energy  and  zeal  during  the  spirited  but  un 
successful  presidential  campaign  for  Henry  Clay.  He 
not  only  made  an  extensive  canvass  in  Illinois,  but  also 
made  a  number  of  speeches  in  the  adjoining  State  of 
Indiana. 

It  was  probably  during  that  year  that  a  tacit  agree 
ment  was  reached  among  the  Whig  leaders  in  Sanga- 
mon  County,  that  each  would  be  satisfied  with  one 
term  in  Congress  and  would  not  seek  a  second  nomina 
tion.  But  Hardin  was  the  aspirant  from  the  neighbor 
ing  county  of  Morgan,  and  apparently  therefore  not 


74  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

included  in  this  arrangement.  Already,  in  the  fall  of 
1845,  Lincoln  industriously  began  his  appeals  and  in 
structions  to  his  friends  in  the  district  to  secure  the 
succession.  Thus  he  wrote  on  November  17: 

'The  paper  at  Pekin  has  nominated  Hardin  for  gov 
ernor,  and,  commenting  on  this,  the  Alton  paper  indi 
rectly  nominated  him  for  Congress.  It  would  give 
Hardin  a  great  start,  and  perhaps  use  me  up,  if  the 
Whig  papers  of  the  district  should  nominate  him  for 
Congress.  If  your  feelings  toward  me  are  the  same  as 
when  I  saw  you  (which  I  have  no  reason  to  doubt), 
I  wish  you  would  let  nothing  appear  in  your  paper 
which  may  operate  against  me.  You  understand. 
Matters  stand  just  as  they  did  when  I  saw  you.  Baker 
is  certainly  off  the  track,  and  I  fear  Hardin  intends  to 
be  on  it." 

But  again,  as  before,  the  spirit  of  absolute  fairness 
governed  all  his  movements,  and  he  took  special  pains 
to  guard  against  it  being  "suspected  that  I  was  attempt 
ing  to  juggle  Hardin  out  of  a  nomination  for  Congress 
by  juggling  him  into  one  for  governor."  "I  should 
be  pleased,"  he  wrote  again  in  January,  "if  I  could 
concur  with  you  in  the  hope  that  my  name  would  be 
the  only  one  presented  to  the  convention ;  but  I  cannot. 
Hardin  is  a  man  of  desperate  energy  and  perseverance, 
and  one  that  never  backs  out;  and,  I  fear,  to  think 
otherwise  is  to  be  deceived  in  the  character  of  our  ad 
versary.  I  would  rejoice  to  be  spared  the  labor  of  a 
contest,  but,  'being  in,'  I  shall  go  it  thoroughly  and  to 
the  bottom."  He  then  goes  on  to  recount  in  much 
detail  the  chances  for  and  against  him  in  the  several 
counties  of  the  district,  and  in  later  letters  discusses 
the  system  of  selecting  candidates,  where  the  conven 
tion  ought  to  be  held,  how  the  delegates  should  be 
chosen,  the  instructions  they  should  receive,  and  how 


LINCOLN  NOMINATED  75 

the  places  of  absent  delegates  should  be  filled.  He 
watched  his  field  of  operations,  planned  his  strategy, 
and  handled  his  forces  almost  with  the  vigilance  of  a 
military  commander.  As  a  result,  he  won  both  his 
nomination  in  May  and  his  election  to  the  Thirtieth 
Congress  in  August,  1846. 

In  that  same  year  the  Mexican  War  broke  out. 
Hardin  became  colonel  of  one  of  the  three  regiments 
of  Illinois  volunteers  called  for  by  President  Polk, 
while  Baker  raised  a  fourth  regiment,  which  was  also 
accepted.  Colonel  Hardin  was  killed  in  the  battle  of 
Buena  Vista,  and  Colonel  Baker  won  great  distinction 
in  the  fighting  near  the  City  of  Mexico. 

Like  Abraham  Lincoln,  Douglas  was  also  elected  to 
Congress  in  1846,  where  he  had  already  served  the  two 
preceding  terms.  But  these  redoubtable  Illinois  cham 
pions  were  not  to  have  a  personal  tilt  in  the  House  of 
Representatives.  Before  Congress  met,  the  Illinois 
legislature  elected  Douglas  to  the  United  States  Sen- 
tae  for  six  years  from  March  4,  1847. 


VI 


First  Session  of  the  Thirtieth  Congress — Mexican  War 
—"Wilinot  Proviso" — Campaign  of  1848 — Letters  to 
Herndon  about  Young  Men  in  Politics — Speech  in 
Congress  on  the  Mexican  War — Second  Session  of  the 
Thirtieth  Congress — Bill  to  Prohibit  Slavery  in  the  Dis 
trict  of  Columbia — Lincoln's  Recommendations  of  Of 
fice-Seekers — Letters  to  Speed — Commissioner  of  the 
General  Land  Office — Declines  Governership  of  Oregon 

VERY  few  men  are  fortunate  enough  to  gain  dis 
tinction  during  their  first  term  in  Congress.  The 
reason  is  obvious.  Legally,  a  term  extends  over  two 
years;  practically,  a  session  of  five  or  six  months  dur 
ing  the  first,  and  three  months  during  the  second  year 
ordinarily  reduce  their  opportunities  more  than  one 
half.  In  those  two  sessions,  even  if  we  presuppose 
some  knowledge  of  parliamentary  law,  they  must  learn 
the  daily  routine  of  business,  make  the  acquaintance  of 
their  fellow-members,  who  already,  in  the  Thirtieth 
Congress,  numbered  something  over  two  hundred, 
study  the  past  and  prospective  legislation  on  a  multi 
tude  of  minor  national  questions  entirely  new  to  the 
new  members,  and  perform  the  drudgery  of  haunting 
the  departments  in  the  character  of  unpaid  agent  and 
attorney  to  attend  to  the  private  interests  of  constitu 
ents — a  physical  task  of  no  small  proportions  in  Lin 
coln's  day,  when  there  was  neither  street-car  nor  om 
nibus  in  the  "city  of  magnificent  distances,"  as  Wash 
ington  was  nicknamed.  Add  to  this  that  the  principal 

76 


SERVICE   IN   CONGRESS  77 

work  of  preparing  legislation  is  done  by  the  various 
committees  in  their  committee-rooms,  of  which  the 
public  hears  nothing,  and  that  members  cannot  choose 
their  own  time  for  making  speeches ;  still  further,  that 
the  management  of  debate  on  prepared  legislation  must 
necessarily  be  intrusted  to  members  of  long  experience 
as  well  as  talent,  and  it  will  be  seen  that  the  novice 
need  not  expect  immediate  fame. 

It  is  therefore  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  Lincoln's 
single  term  in  the  House  of  Representatives  at  Wash 
ington  added  practically  nothing  to  his  reputation.  He 
did  not  attempt  to  shine  forth  in  debate  by  either  a 
stinging  retort  or  a  witty  epigram,  or  by  a  sudden  burst 
of  inspired  eloquence.  On  the  contrary,  he  took  up  his 
task  as  a  quiet  but  earnest  and  patient  apprentice  in 
the  great  workshop  of  national  legislation,  and  per 
formed  his  share  of  duty  with  industry  and  intelligence, 
as  \vell  as  with  a  modest  and  appreciative  respect  for 
the  ability  and  experience  of  his  seniors. 

"As  to  speechmaking,"  he  wrote,  "by  way  of  getting 
the  hang  of  the  House,  I  made  a  little  speech  two  or 
three  days  ago  on  a  post-office  question  of  no  general 
interest.  I  find  speaking  here  and  elsewhere  about  the 
same  thing.  I  was  about  as  badly  scared,  and  no 
worse,  as  I  am  when  I  speak  in  court.  I  expect  to 
make  one  within  a  week  or  two  in  which  I  hope  to  suc 
ceed  well  enough  to  wish  you  to  see  it."  And  again, 
some  weeks  later :  "I  just  take  my  pen  to  say  that  Mr. 
Stephens  of  Georgia,  a  little,  slim,  pale-faced  consump 
tive  man  with  a  voice  like  Logan's,  has  just  concluded 
the  very  best  speech  of  an  hour's  length  I  ever  heard. 
My  old,  withered,  dry  eyes  are  full  of  tears  yet." 

He  was  appointed  the  junior  Whig  member  of  the 
Committee  on  Post-offices  and  Post-roads,  and  shared 
its  prosaic  but  eminently  useful  labors  both  in  the  com- 


78  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

mittee-room  and  the  House  debates.  His  name  appears 
on  only  one  other  committee, — that  on  Expenditures  of 
the  War  Department, — and  he  seems  to  have  interested 
himself  in  certain  amendments  of  the  law  relating  to 
bounty  lands  for  soldiers  and  such  minor  military  top 
ics.  He  looked  carefully  after  the  interests  of  Illinois 
in  certain  grants  of  land  to  that  State  for  railroads, 
but  expressed  his  desire  that  the  government  price  of 
the  reserved  sections  should  not  be  increased  to  actual 
settlers. 

During  the  first  session  of  the  Thirtieth  Congress  he 
delivered  three  set  speeches  in  the  House,  all  of  them 
carefully  prepared  and  fully  written  out.  The  first 
of  these,  on  January  12,  1848,  was  an  elaborate  defense 
of  the  Whig  doctrine  summarized  in  a  House  resolu 
tion,  passed  a  week  or  ten  days  before,  that  the  Mexi 
can  War  "had  been  unnecessarily  and  unconstitution 
ally  commenced  by  the  President,"  James  K.  Polk. 
The  speech  is  not  a  mere  party  diatribe,  but  a  terse  his 
torical  and  legal  examination  of  the  origin  of  the  Mexi 
can  War.  In  the  after-light  of  our  own  times  which 
shines  upon  these  transactions,  we  may  readily  admit 
that  Mr.  Lincoln  and  the  Whigs  had  the  best  of  the 
argument,  but  it  must  be  quite  as  readily  conceded  that 
they  were  far  behind  the  President  and  his  defenders 
in  political  and  party  strategy.  The  former  were 
clearly  wasting  their  time  in  discussing  an  abstract 
question  of  international  law  upon  conditions  existing 
twenty  months  before.  During  those  twenty  months 
the  American  arms  had  won  victory  after  victory,  and 
planted  the  American  flag  on  the  "halls  of  the  Monte- 
zumas."  Could  even  successful  argument  undo  those 
victories  or  call  back  to  life  the  brave  American  sol 
diers  who  had  shed  their  blood  to  win  them  ? 

It  may  be  assumed  as  an  axiom  that  Providence  has 


"WILMOT  PROVISO"  79 

never  gifted  any  political  party  with  all  of  political  wis 
dom  or  blinded  it  with  all  of  political  folly.  Upon  the 
foregoing  point  of  controversy  the  Whigs  were  sadly 
thrown  on  the  defensive,  and  labored  heavily  under 
their  already  discounted  declamation.  But  instinct 
rather  than  sagacity  led  them  to  turn  their  eyes  to  the 
future,  and  successfully  upon  other  points  to  retrieve 
their  mistake.  Within  six  weeks  after  Lincoln's  speech 
President  Polk  sent  to  the  Senate  a  treaty  of  peace, 
under  which  Mexico  ceded  to  the  United  States  an 
extent  of  territory  equal  in  area  to  Germany,  France, 
and  Spain  combined,  and  thereafter  the  origin  of  the 
war  was  an  obsolete  question.  What  should  be  done 
with  the  new  territory  was  now  the  issue. 

This  issue  embraced  the  already  exciting  slavery 
question,  and  Mr.  Lincoln  was  doubtless  gratified  that 
the  Whigs  had  taken  a  position  upon  it  so  consonant 
with  his  own  convictions.  Already,  in  the  previous 
Congress,  the  body  of  the  Whig  members  had  joined 
a  small  group  of  antislavery  Democrats  in  fastening 
upon  an  appropriation  bill  the  famous  "Wilmot  Pro 
viso,"  that  slavery  should  never  exist  in  territory  ac 
quired  from  Mexico,  and  the  Whigs  of  the  Thirtieth 
Congress  steadily  followed  the  policy  of  voting  for  the 
same  restriction  in  regard  to  every  piece  of  legislation 
where  it  was  applicable.  Mr.  Lincoln  often  said  he 
had  voted  forty  or  fifty  times  for  the  Wilmot  Proviso 
in  various  forms  during  his  single  term. 

Upon  another  point  he  and  the  other  Whigs  were 
equally  wise.  Repelling  the  Democratic  charge  that 
they  were  unpatriotic  in  denouncing  the  war,  they  voted 
in  favor  of  every  measure  to  sustain,  supply,  and  en 
courage  the  soldiers  in  the  field.  But  their  most  adroit 
piece  of  strategy,  now  that  the  war  was  ended,  was  in 
their  movement  to  make  General  Taylor  President. 


8o  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

In  this  movement  Mr.  Lincoln  took  a  leading  and 
active  part.  No  living  American  statesman  has  ever 
been  idolized  by  his  party  adherents  as  was  Henry  Clay 
for  a  whole  generation,  and  Mr.  Lincoln  fully  shared 
this  hero-worship.  But  his  practical  campaigning  as 
a  candidate  for  presidential  elector  in  the  Harrison 
campaign  of  1840,  and  the  Clay  campaign  of  1844, 
in  Illinois  and  the  adjoining  States,  afforded  him  a 
basis  for  sound  judgment,  and  convinced  him  that  the 
day  when  Clay  could  have  been  elected  President  was 
forever  passed. 

"Mr.  Clay's  chance  for  an  election  is  just  no  chance 
at  all,"  he  wrote  on  April  30.  "He  might  get  New 
York,  and  that  would  have  elected  in  1844,  but  it  will 
not  now,  because  he  must  now,  at  the  least,  lose  Tennes 
see,  which  he  had  then,  and  in  addition  the  fifteen  new 
votes  of  Florida,  Texas,  Iowa,  and  Wisconsin.  .  .  . 
In  my  judgment,  we  can  elect  nobody  but  General  Tay 
lor;  and  we  cannot  elect  him  without  a  nomination. 
Therefore  don't  fail  to  send  a  delegate."  And  again  on 
the  same  day :  "Mr.  Clay's  letter  has  not  advanced  his 
interests  any  here.  Several  who  were  against  Taylor, 
but  not  for  anybody  particularly  before,  are  since  tak 
ing  ground,  some  for  Scott  and  some  for  McLean. 
Who  will  be  nominated  neither  I  nor  any  one  else  can 
tell.  Now,  let  me  pray  to  you  in  turn.  My  prayer  is 
that  you  let  nothing  discourage  or  baffle  you,  but  that, 
in  spite  of  every  difficulty,  you  send  us  a  good  Taylor 
delegate  from  your  circuit.  Make  Baker,  who  is  now 
with  you,  I  suppose,  help  about  it.  He  is  a  good  hand 
to  raise  a  breeze." 

In  due  time  Mr.  Lincoln's  sagacity  and  earnestness 
were  both  justified ;  for  on  June  12  he  was  able  to  write 
to  an  Illinois  friend : 

"On  my  return  from  Philadelphia,  where  I  had  been 


CAMPAIGN  OF   1848  81 

attending  the  nomination  of  'Old  Rough,'  I  found  your 
letter  in  a  mass  of  others  which  had  accumulated  in  my 
absence.  By  many,  and  often,  it  had  been  said  they 
would  not  abide  the  nomination  of  Taylor;  but  since 
the  deed  has  been  done,  they  are  fast  falling  in,  and 
in  my  opinion  we  shall  have  a  most  overwhelming, 
glorious  triumph.  One  unmistakable  sign  is  that  all 
the  odds  and  ends  are  with  us — Barnburners,  Native 
Americans,  Tyler  men,  disappointed  office-seeking  Lo- 
cofocos,  and  the  Lord  knows  what.  This  is  important,  if 
in  nothing  else,  in  showing  which  way  the  wind  blows. 
Some  of  the  sanguine  men  have  set  down  all  the  States 
as  certain  for  Taylor  but  Illinois,  and  it  as  doubtful. 
Cannot  something  be  done  even  in  Illinois?  Taylor's 
nomination  takes  the  Locos  on  the  blind  side.  It  turns 
the  war-thunder  against  them.  The  war  is  now  to 
them  the  gallows  of  Haman,  which  they  built  for  us, 
and  on  which  they  are  doomed  to  be  hanged  them 
selves." 

Nobody  understood  better  than  Mr.  Lincoln  the  ob 
vious  truth  that  in  politics  it  does  not  suffice  merely  to 
nominate  candidates.  Something  must  also  be  done  to 
elect  them.  Two  of  the  letters  which  he  at  this  time 
wrote  home  to  his  young  law  partner,  William  H. 
Herndon,  are  especially  worth  quoting  in  part,  not 
alone  to  show  his  own  zeal  and  industry,  but  also  as  a 
perennial  instruction  and  encouragement  to  young  men 
who  have  an  ambition  to  make  a  name  and  a  place  for 
themselves  in  American  politics : 

"Last  night  I  was  attending  a  sort  of  caucus  of  the 
Whig  members,  held  in  relation  to  the  coming  presi 
dential  election.  The  whole  field  of  the  nation  was 
scanned,  and  all  is  high  hope  and  confidence. 
Now,  as  to  the  young  men.  You  must  not  wait  to  be 
brought  forward  by  the  older  men.  For  instance,  do 


82  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

you  suppose  that  I  should  ever  have  got  into  notice  if 
I  had  waited  to  be  hunted  up  and  pushed  forward  by 
older  men?  You  young  men  get  together  and  form 
a  'Rough  and  Ready  Club/  and  have  regular  meetings 
and  speeches.  .  .  .  Let  every  one  play  the  part 
he  can  play  best, — some  speak,  some  sing,  and  all 
'holler.'  Your  meetings  will  be  of  evenings;  the  older 
men,  and  the  women,  will  go  to  hear  you ;  so  that  it  will 
not  only  contribute  to  the  election  of  'Old  Zach,'  but 
will  be  an  interesting  pastime,  and  improving  to  the 
intellectual  faculties  of  all  engaged." 

And  in  another  letter,  answering  one  from  Herndon 
in  which  that  young  aspirant  complains  of  having  been 
neglected,  he  says : 

"The  subject  of  that  letter  is  exceedingly  painful  to 
me;  and  I  cannot  but  think  there  is  some  mistake  in 
your  impression  of  the  motives  of  the  old  men.  I  sup 
pose  I  am  now  one  of  the  old  men;  and  I  declare,  on 
my  veracity,  which  I  think  is  good  with  you,  that 
nothing  could  afford  me  more  satisfaction  than  to 
learn  that  you  and  others  of  my  young  friends  at  home 
are  doing  battle  in  the  contest,  and  endearing  them 
selves  to  the  people,  and  taking  a  stand  far  above  any 
I  have  been  able  to  reach  in  their  admiration.  I  cannot 
conceive  that  other  old  men  feel  differently.  Of  course 
I  cannot  demonstrate  what  I  say ;  but  I  was  young  once, 
and  I  am  sure  I  was  never  ungenerously  thrust  back. 
I  hardly  know  what  to  say.  The  way  for  a  young  man 
to  rise  is  to  improve  himself  every  way  he  can,  never 
suspecting  that  anybody  wishes  to  hinder  him.  Allow 
me  to  assure  you  that  suspicion  and  jealousy  never  did 
help  any  man  in  any  situation.  There  may  sometimes  be 
ungenerous  attempts  to  keep  a  young  man  down;  and 
they  will  succeed,  too,  if  he  allows  his  mind  to  be  di 
verted  from  its  true  channel  to  brood  over  the  attempted 


SPEECHES  IN  CONGRESS  83 

injury.  Cast  about,  and  see  if  this  feeling  has  not  in 
jured  every  person  you  have  ever  known  to  fall  into  it." 

Mr.  Lincoln's  interest  in  this  presidential  campaign 
did  not  expend  itself  merely  in  advice  to  others.  We 
have  his  own  written  record  that  he  also  took  an  active 
part  for  the  election  of  General  Taylor  after  his  nom 
ination,  speaking  a  few  times  in  Maryland  near  Wash 
ington,  several  times  in  Massachusetts,  and  canvassing 
quite  fully  his  own  district  in  Illinois.  Before  the 
session  of  Congress  ended  he  also  delivered  two 
speeches  in  the  House — one  on  the  general  subject  of 
internal  improvements,  and  the  other  the  usual  political 
campaign  speech  which  members  of  Congress  are  in 
the  habit  of  making  to  be  printed  for  home  circulation ; 
made  up  mainly  of  humorous  and  satirical  criticism, 
favoring  the  election  of  General  Taylor,  and  opposing 
the  election  of  General  Cass,  the  Democratic  candidate. 
Even  this  production,  however,  is  lighted  up  by  a  pas 
sage  of  impressive  earnestness  and  eloquence,  in  which 
he  explains  and  defends  the  attitude  of  the  \Vhigs  in 
denouncing  the  origin  of  the  Mexican  War : 

"If  to  say  'the  war  was  unnecessarily  and  unconstitu 
tionally  commenced  by  the  President,'  be  opposing  the 
war,  then  the  Whigs  have  very  generally  opposed  it. 
Whenever  they  have  spoken  at  all  they  have  said  this; 
and  they  have  said  it  on  what  has  appeared  good  reason 
to  them.  The  marching  an  army  into  the  midst  of  a 
peaceful  Mexican  settlement,  frightening  the  inhabi 
tants  away,  leaving  their  growing  crops  and  other 
property  to  destruction,  to  you  may  appear  a  perfectly 
amiable,  peaceful,  unprovoking  procedure;  but  it  does 
not  appear  so  to  us.  So  to  call  such  an  act,  to  us  ap 
pears  no  other  than  a  naked,  impudent  absurdity,  and 
we  speak  of  it  accordingly.  But  if,  when  the  war  had  be 
gun,  and  had  become  the  cause  of  the  country,  the  giv-. 


84  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

ing  of  our  money  and  our  blood,  in  common  with  yours, 
was  support  of  the  war,  then  it  is  not  true  that  we  have 
always  opposed  the  war.  With  few  individual  excep 
tions,  you  have  constantly  had  our  votes  here  for  all 
the  necessary  supplies.  And,  more  than  this,  you  have 
had  the  services,  the  blood,  and  the  lives  of  our  politi 
cal  brethren  in  every  trial  and  on  every  field.  The 
beardless  boy  and  the  mature  man,  the  humble  and  the 
distinguished — you  have  had  them.  Through  suffer 
ing  and  death,  by  disease  and  in  battle,  they  have  en 
dured,  and  fought  and  fell  with^you.  Clay  and  Web 
ster  each  gave  a  son,  never  to  be  returned.  From  the 
State  of  my  own  residence,  besides  other  worthy  but 
less  known  Whig  names,  we  sent  Marshall,  Morrison, 
Baker,  and  Hardin ;  they  all  fought  and  one  fell,  and  in 
the  fall  of  that  one  we  lost  our  best  Whig  man.  Nor 
were  the  Whigs  few  in  number  or  laggard  in  the  day 
of  danger.  In  that  fearful,  bloody,  breathless  struggle 
at  Buena  Vista,  where  each  man's  hard  task  was  to  beat 
back  five  foes  or  die  himself,  of  the  five  high  officers 
who  perished,  four  were  Whigs.  In  speaking  of  this,  I 
mean  no  odious  comparison  between  the  lion-hearted 
Whigs  and  the  Democrats  who  fought  there.  On 
other  occasions,  and  among  the  lower  officers  and  pri 
vates  on  that  occasion,  I  doubt  not  the  proportion  was 
different.  I  wish  to  do  justice  to  all.  I  think  of  all 
those  brave  men  as  Americans,  in  whose  proud  fame, 
as  an  American,  I,  too,  have  a  share.  Many  of  them, 
Whigs  and  Democrats,  are  my  constituents  and  per 
sonal  friends;  and  I  thank  them — more  than  thank 
them — one  and  all,  for  the  high,  imperishable  honor 
they  have  conferred  on  our  common  State." 

During  the  second  session  of  the  Thirtieth  Congress 
Mr.  Lincoln  made  no  long  speeches,  but  in  addition  to 
the  usual  routine  work  devolved  on  him  by  the  com- 


SLAVERY  AT  WASHINGTON  85 

mittee  of  which  he  was  a  member,  he  busied  himself  in 
preparing  a  special  measure  which,  because  of  its  re 
lation  to  the  great  events  of  his  later  life,  needs  to  be 
particularly  mentioned.  Slavery  existed  in  Maryland 
and  Virginia  when  these  States  ceded  the  territory  out 
of  which  the  District  of  Columbia  was  formed.  Since, 
by  that  cession,  this  land  passed  under  the  exclusive 
control  of  the  Federal  government,  the  "institution" 
within  this  ten  miles  square  could  no  longer  be  de 
fended  by  the  plea  of  State  sovereignty,  and  antislavery 
sentiment  naturally  demanded  that  it  should  cease. 
Pro-slavery  statesmen,  on  the  other  hand,  as  persis 
tently  opposed  its  removal,  partly  as  a  matter  of  pride 
and  political  consistency,  partly  because  it  was  a  con 
venience  to  Southern  senators  and  members  of  Con 
gress,  when  they  came  to  Washington,  to  bring  their 
family  servants  where  the  local  laws  afforded  them  the 
same  security  over  their  black  chattels  which  existed  at 
their  homes.  Mr.  Lincoln,  in  his  Peoria  speech  in 
1854,  emphasized  the  sectional  dispute  with  this  vivid 
touch  of  local  color : 

"The  South  clamored  for  a  more  efficient  fugitive- 
slave  law.  The  North  clamored  for  the  abolition  of  a 
peculiar  species  of  slave  trade  in  the  District  of  Colum 
bia,  in  connection  with  which,  in  view  from  the  win 
dows  of  the  Capitol,  a  sort  of  negro  livery-stable,  where 
droves  of  negroes  were  collected,  temporarily  kept,  and 
finally  taken  to  Southern  markets,  precisely  like  droves 
of  horses,  had  been  openly  maintained  for  fifty  years." 

Thus  the  question  remained  a  minor  but  never  ending 
bone  of  contention  and  point  of  irritation,  and  excited 
debate  arose  in  the  Thirtieth  Congress  over  a  House 
resolution  that  the  Committee  on  .the  Judiciary  be  in 
structed  to  report  a  bill  as  soon  as  practicable  prohib 
iting  the  slave  trade  in  the  District  of  Columbia.  In 


86  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

this  situation  of  affairs,  Mr.  Lincoln  conceived  the  fond 
hope  that  he  might  be  able  to  present  a  plan  of  com 
promise.  He  already  entertained  the  idea  which  in 
later  years  during  his  presidency  he  urged  upon  both 
Congress  and  the  border  slave  States,  that  the  just  and 
generous  mode  of  getting  rid  of  the  barbarous  insti 
tution  of  slavery  was  by  a  system  of  compensated  eman 
cipation,  giving  freedom  to  the  slave  and  a  money 
indemnity  to  the  owner.  He  therefore  carefully  framed 
a  bill  providing  for  the  abolishment  of  slavery  in  the 
District  upon  the  following  principal  conditions  : 

First.  That  the  law  should  be  adopted  by  a  popular 
vote  in  the  District. 

Second.  A  temporary  system  of  apprenticeship  and 
gradual  emancipation  for  children  born  of  slave 
mothers  after  January  i,  1850. 

Third.  The  government  to  pay  full  cash  value  for 
slaves  voluntarily  manumitted  by  their  owners. 

Fourth.  Prohibiting  bringing  slaves  into  the  District, 
or  selling  them  out  of  it. 

Fifth.  Providing  that  government  officers,  citizens 
of  slave  States,  might  bring  with  them  and  take  away 
again,  their  slave  house-servants. 

Sixth.  Leaving  the  existing  fugitive-slave  law  in 
force. 

When  Mr.  Lincoln  presented  this  amendment  to  the 
House,  he  said  that  he  was  authorized  to  state  that  of 
about  fifteen  of  the  leading  citizens  of  the  District  of 
Columbia,  to  whom  the  proposition  had  been  submitted, 
there  was  not  one  who  did  not  approve  the  adoption  of 
such  a  proposition.  He  did  not  wish  to  be  misunder 
stood.  He  did  not  know  whether  or  not  they  would 
vote  for  this  bill  on  the  first  Monday  in  April;  but  he 
repeated  that  out  of  fifteen  persons  to  whom  it  had  been 
submitted,  he  had  authority  to  say  that  every  one  of 


OFFICE-SEEKERS  87 

them  desired  that  some  proposition  like  this  should 
pass. 

While  Mr.  Lincoln  did  not  so  state  to  the  House, 
it  was  well  understood  in  intimate  circles  that  the  bill 
had  the  approval  on  the  one  hand  of  Mr.  Seaton,  the 
conservative  mayor  of  Washington,  and  on  the  other 
hand  of  Mr.  Giddings,  the  radical  antislavery  member 
of  the  House  of  Representatives.  Notwithstanding 
the  singular  merit  of  the  bill  in  reconciling  such  ex 
tremes  of  opposing  factions  in  its  support,  the  temper 
of  Congress  had  already  become  too  hot  to  accept  such 
a  rational  and  practical  solution,  and  Mr.  Lincoln's 
wise  proposition  was  not  allowed  to  come  to  a  vote. 

The  triumphant  election  of  General  Taylor  to  the 
presidency  in  November,  1848,  very  soon  devolved 
upon  Mr.  Lincoln  the  delicate  and  difficult  duty  of  mak 
ing  recommendations  to  the  incoming  administration 
of  persons  suitable  to  be  appointed  to  fill  the  various 
Federal  offices  in  Illinois,  as  Colonel  E.  D.  Baker  and 
himself  were  the  only  Whigs  elected  to  Congress  from 
that  State.  In  performing  this  duty,  one  of  his  leading 
characteristics,  impartial  honesty  and  absolute  fairness 
to  political  friends  and  foes  alike,  stands  out  with  note 
worthy  clearness.  His  term  ended  with  General  Tay 
lor's  inauguration,  and  he  appears  to  have  remained  in 
Washington  but  a  few  days  thereafter.  Before  leaving, 
he  wrote  to  the  new  Secretary  of  the  Treasury : 

"Colonel  E.  D.  Baker  and  myself  are  the  only  Whig 
members  of  Congress  from  Illinois — I  of  the  Thirtieth, 
and  he  of  the  Thirty-first.  We  have  reason  to  think 
the  Whigs  of  that  State  hold  us  responsible,  to  some  ex 
tent,  for  the  appointments  which  may  be  made  of  our 
citizens.  We  do  not  know  you  personally,  and  our  ef 
forts  to  see  you  have,  so  far,  been  unavailing.  I  there 
fore  hope  I  am  not  obtrusive  in  saying  in  this  way,  for 


88  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

him  and  myself,  that  when  a  citizen  of  Illinois  is  to  be 
appointed,  in  your  department,  to  an  office,  either  in  or 
out  of  the  State,  we  most  respectfully  ask  to  be  heard." 

On  the  following  day,  March  10,  1849,  ne  addressed 
to  the  Secretary  of  State  his  first  formal  recommenda 
tion.  It  is  remarkable  from  the  fact  that  between  the 
two  Whig  applicants  whose  papers  are  transmitted,  he 
says  rather  less  in  favor  of  his  own  choice  than  of  the 
opposing  claimant. 

"SiR :  There  are  several  applicants  for  the  office  of 
United  States  Marshal  for  the  District  of  Illinois, 
among  the  most  prominent  of  whom  are  Benjamin 
Bond,  Esq.,  of  Carlyle,  and  -  —  Thomas,  Esq.,  of 
Galena.  Mr.  Bond  I  know  to  be  personally  every  way 
worthy  of  the  office;  and  he  is  very  numerously  and 
most  respectably  recommended.  His  papers  I  send  to 
you ;  and  I  solicit  for  his  claims  a  full  and  fair  consid 
eration.  Having  said  this  much,  I  add  that  in  my  in 
dividual  judgment  the  appointment  of  Mr.  Thomas 
would  be  the  better. 

"Your  obedient  servant, 

"A.  LINCOLN." 
(Indorsed  on  Mr.  Bond's  papers.) 

"In  this  and  the  accompanying  envelop  are  the  rec 
ommendations  of  about  two  hundred  good  citizens,  of 
all  parts  of  Illinois,  that  Benjamin  Bond  be  appointed 
marshal  for  that  district.  They  include  the  names  of 
nearly  all  our  Whigs  who  now  are,  or  have  ever  been, 
members  of  the  State  legislature,  besides  forty-six  of 
the  Democratic  members  of  the  present  legislature,  and 
many  other  good  citizens.  I  add  that  from  personal 
knowledge  I  consider  Mr.  Bond  every  way  worthy  of 
the  office,  and  qualified  to  fill  it.  Holding  the  indi 
vidual  opinion  that  the  appointment  of  a  different  gen 
tleman  would  be  better,  I  ask  especial  attention  and 


OFFICE-SEEKERS  89 

consideration  for  his  claims,  and  for  the  opinions  ex 
pressed  in  his  favor  by  those  over  whom  I  can  claim  no 
superiority." 

There  were  but  three  other  prominent  Federal  ap 
pointments  to  be  made  in  Mr.  Lincoln's  congressional 
district,  and  he  waited  until  after  his  return  home  so 
that  he  might  be  better  informed  of  the  local  opinion 
concerning  them  before  making  his  recommendations. 
It  was  nearly  a  month  after  he  left  Washington  before 
he  sent  his  decision  to  the  several  departments  at  Wash 
ington.  The  letter  quoted  below,  relating  to  one  of 
these  appointments,  is  in  substance  almost  identical  with 
the  others,  and  particularly  refrains  from  expressing 
any  opinion  of  his  own  for  or  against  the  policy  of 
political  removals.  He  also  expressly  explains  that 
Colonel  Baker,  the  other  Whig  representative,  claims 
no  voice  in  the  appointment. 

"DEAR  SIR  :  I  recommend  that  Walter  Davis  be  ap 
pointed  Receiver  of  the  Land  Office  at  this  place,  when 
ever  there  shall  be  a  vacancy.  I  cannot  say  that  Mr. 
Herndon,  the  present  incumbent,  has  failed  in  the 
proper  discharge  of  any  of  the  duties  of  the  office.  He 
is  a  very  warm  partizan,  and  openly  and  actively  op 
posed  to  the  election  of  General  Taylor.  I  also  under 
stand  that  since  General  Taylor's  election  he  has 
received  a  reappointment  from  Mr.  Polk,  his  old  com 
mission  not  having  expired.  Whether  this  is  true  the 
records  of  the  department  will  show.  I  may  add  that 
the  Whigs  here  almost  universally  desire  his  removal." 

If  Mr.  Lincoln's  presence  in  Washington  during  two 
sessions  in  Congress  did  not  add  materially  to  either  his 
local  or  national  fame,  it  was  of  incalculable  benefit  in 
other  respects.  It  afforded  him  a  close  inspection  of 
the  complex  machinery  of  the  Federal  government  and 
its  relation  to  that  of  the  States,  and  enabled  him  to 


90  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

notice  both  the  easy  routine  and  the  occasional  friction 
of  their  movements.  It  brought  him  into  contact  and, 
to  some  degree,  intimate  companionship  with  political 
leaders  from  all  parts  of  the  Union,  and  gave  him  the 
opportunity  of  joining  in  the  caucus  and  the  national 
convention  that  nominated  General  Taylor  for  Presi 
dent.  It  broadened  immensely  the  horizon  of  his  ob 
servation,  and  the  sharp  personal  rivalries  he  noted  at 
the  center  of  the  nation  opened  to  him  new  lessons  in 
the  study  of  human  nature.  His  quick  intelligence 
acquired  knowledge  quite  as,  or  even  more,  rapidly  by 
process  of  logical  intuition  than  by  mere  dry,  laborious 
study ;  and  it  was  the  inestimable  experience  of  this  sin 
gle  term  in  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  which 
prepared  him  for  his  coming,  yet  undreamed-o£,  re 
sponsibilities,  as  fully  as  it  would  have  done  the  ordi 
nary  man  in  a  dozen. 

Mr.  Lincoln  had  frankly  acknowledged  to  his  friend 
Speed,  after  his  election  in  1846,  that  "being  elected 
to  Congress,  though  I  am  very  grateful  to  our  friends 
for  having  done  it,  has  not  pleased  me  as  much  as  I 
expected."  It  has  already  been  said  that  an  agreement 
had  been  reached  among  the  several  Springfield  aspir 
ants,  that  they  would  limit  their  ambition  to  a  single 
term,  and  take  turns  in  securing  and  enjoying  the 
coveted  distinction;  and  Mr.  Lincoln  remained  faithful 
to  this  agreement.  When  the  time  to  prepare  for  the 
election  of  1848  approached,  he  wrote  to  his  law 
partner : 

"It  is  very  pleasant  to  learn  from  you  that  there  are 
some  who  desire  that  I  should  be  reflected.  I  most 
heartily  thank  them  for  their  kind  partiality ;  and  I  can 
say,  as  Mr.  Clay  said  of  the  annexation  of  Texas,  that 
'personally  I  would  not  object'  to  a  reelection,  although 
I  thought  at  the  time,  and  still  think,  it  would  be  quite 


THE  GENERAL  LAND  OFFICE          91 

as  well  for  me  to  return  to  the  law  at  the  end  of  a  single 
term.  I  made  the  declaration  that  I  would  not  be  a 
candidate  again,  more  from  a  wish  to  deal  fairly  with 
others,  to  keep  peace  among  our  friends,  and  to  keep 
the  district  from  going  to  the  enemy,  than  for  any  cause 
personal  to  myself;  so  that,  if  it  should  so  happen  that 
nobody  else  wishes  to  be  elected,  I  could  not  refuse  the 
people  the  right  of  sending  me  again.  But  to  enter 
myself  as  a  competitor  of  others,  or  to  authorize 
any  one  so  to  enter  me,  is  what  my  word  and  honor 
forbid." 

Judge  Stephen  T.  Logan,  his  late  law  partner,  was 
nominated  for  the  place,  and  heartily  supported  not 
only  by  Mr.  Lincoln,  but  also  by  the  Whigs  of  the  dis 
trict.  By  this  time,  however,  the  politics  of  the  dis 
trict  had  undergone  a  change  by  reason  of  the  heavy 
emigration  to  Illinois  at  that  period,  and  Judge  Logan 
was  defeated. 

Mr.  Lincoln's  strict  and  sensitive  adherence  to  his 
promises  now  brought  him  a  disappointment  which 
was  one  of  those  blessings  in  disguise  so  commonly 
deplored  for  the  time  being  by  the  wisest  and  best. 
A  number  of  the  Western  members  of  Congress  had 
joined  in  a  recommendation  to  President-elect  Taylor  to 
give  Colonel  E.  D.  Baker  a  place  in  his  cabinet,  a  re 
ward  he  richly  deserved  for  his  talents,  his  party  ser 
vice,  and  the  military  honor  he  had  won  in  the  Mexican 
War.  When  this  application  bore  no  fruit,  the  Whigs  of 
Illinois,  expecting  at  least  some  encouragement  from 
the  new  administration,  laid  claim  to  a  bureau  appoint 
ment,  that  of  Commissioner  of  the  General  Land 
Office,  in  the  new  Department  of  the  Interior,  recently 
established. 

"I  believe  that,  so  far  as  the  Whigs  in  Congress  are 
concerned,"  wrote  Lincoln  to  Speed  twelve  days  before 


92  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Taylor's  inauguration,  "I  could  have  the  General  Land 
Office  almost  by  common  consent;  but  then  Sweet 
and  Don  Morrison  and  Browning  and  Cyrus  Edwards 
all  want  it,  and  what  is  worse,  while  I  think  I  could 
easily  take  it  myself,  I  fear  I  shall  have  trouble  to  get 
it  for  any  other  man  in  Illinois." 

Unselfishly  yielding  his  own  chances,  he  tried  to  in 
duce  the  four  Illinois  candidates  to  come  to  a  mutual 
agreement  in  favor  of  one  of  their  own  number.  They 
were  so  tardy  in  settling  their  differences  as  to  ex 
cite  his  impatience,  and  he  wrote  to  a  Washington 
friend : 

"I  learn  from  Washington  that  a  man  by  the  name  of 
Butterfield  will  probably  be  appointed  Commissioner 
of  the  General  Land  Office.  This  ought  not  to  be. 
.  .  .  Some  kind  friends  think  I  ought  to  be  an 
applicant,  but  I  am  for  Mr.  Edwards.  Try  to  defeat 
Butterfield,  and,  in  doing  so,  use  Mr.  Edwards,  J.  L. 
D.  Morrison,  or  myself,  whichever  you  can  to  best 
advantage." 

As  the  situation  grew  persistently  worse,  Mr.  Lin 
coln  at  length,  about  the  first  of  June,  himself  became 
a  formal  applicant.  But  the  delay  resulting  from  his 
devotion  to  his  friends  had  dissipated  his  chances. 
Butterfield  received  the  appointment,  and  the  defeat 
was  aggravated  when,  a  few  months  later,  his  unrelent 
ing  spirit  of  justice  and  fairness  impelled  him  to  write 
a  letter  defending  Butterfield  and  the  Secretary  of  the 
Interior  from  an  attack  by  one  of  Lincoln's  warm  per 
sonal  but  indiscreet  friends  in  the  Illinois  legislature. 
It  was,  however,  a  fortunate  escape.  In  the  four  suc 
ceeding  years  Mr.  Lincoln  qualified  himself  for  better 
things  than  the  monotonous  drudgery  of  an  administra 
tive  bureau  at  Washington.  It  is  probable  that  this 
defeat  also  enabled  him  more  easily  to  pass  by  another 


GOVERNORSHIP  OF  OREGON  93 

temptation.  The  Taylor  administration,  realizing  its 
ingratitude,  at  length,  in  September,  offered  him  the 
governorship  of  the  recently  organized  territory  of 
Oregon ;  but  he  replied  : 

"On  as  much  reflection  as  I  have  had  time  to  give 
the  subject,  I  cannot  consent  to  accept  it." 


VII 


Repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise — State  Fair  Debate 
— Peoria  Debate — Trumbull  Elected — Letter  to  Robin 
son — The  Know-Nothings — Decatur  Meeting — Bloom- 
ington  Convention — Philadelphia  Convention — Lin 
coln's  Vote  for  V ice-President — Fremont  and  Dayton 
— Lincoln's  Campaign  Speeches — Chicago  Banquet 
Speech 

AFTER  the  expiration  of  his  term  in  Congress  Mr. 
JLX  Lincoln  applied  himself  with  unremitting  assi 
duity  to  the  practice  of  law,  which  the  growth  of  the 
State  in  population,  and  the  widening  of  his  acquain 
tanceship,  no  less  than  his  own  growth  in  experience 
and  legal  acumen,  rendered  ever  more  important  and 
absorbing. 

"In  1854,"  he  writes,  "his  profession  had  almost 
superseded  the  thought  of  politics  in  his  mind,  when  the 
repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise  aroused  him  as  he 
had  never  been  before." 

Not  alone  Mr.  Lincoln,  but,  indeed,  the  whole  nation, 
was  so  aroused — the  Democratic  party,  and  nearly  the 
entire  South,  to  force  the  passage  of  that  repeal  through 
Congress,  and  an  alarmed  majority,  including  even  a 
considerable  minority  of  the  Democratic  party  in  the 
North,  to  resist  its  passage. 

Mr.  Lincoln,  of  course,  shared  the  general  indigna 
tion  of  Northern  sentiment  that  the  whole  of  the  re 
maining  Louisiana  Territory,  out  of  which  six  States, 
and  the  greater  part  of  two  more,  have  since  been 

94 


FIREBRAND   OF   "REPEAL"  95 

organized  and  admitted  to  the  Union,  should  be  opened 
to  the  possible  extension  of  slavery.  But  two  points 
served  specially  to  enlist  his  energy  in  the  controversy. 
One  was  personal,  in  that  Senator  Douglas  of  Illinois, 
by  whom  the  repeal  was  championed,  and  whose  influ 
ence  as  a  free-State  senator  and  powerful  Democratic 
leader  alone  made  the  repeal  possible,  had  been  his 
personal  antagonist  in  Illinois  politics  for  almost  twenty 
years.  The  other  was  moral,  in  that  the  new  question 
involved  the  elemental  principles  of  the  American  gov 
ernment,  the  fundamental  maxim  of  the  Declaration 
of  Independence,  that  all  men  are  created  equal.  His 
intuitive  logic  needed  no  demonstration  that  bank, 
tariff,  internal  improvements,  the  Mexican  War,  and 
their  related  incidents,  were  questions  of  passing  ex 
pediency;  but  that  this  sudden  reaction,  needlessly 
grafted  upon  a  routine  statute  to  organize  a  new  terri 
tory,  was  the  unmistakable  herald  of  a  coming  struggle 
which  might  transform  republican  institutions. 

It  was  in  January,  1854,  that  the  accidents  of  a 
Senate  debate  threw  into  Congress  and  upon  the  coun 
try  the  firebrand  of  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Com 
promise.  The  repeal  was  not  consummated  till  the 
month  of  May;  and  from  May  until  the  autumn  elec 
tions  the  flame  of  acrimonious  discussion  ran  over  the 
whole  country  like  a  wild  fire.  There  is  no  record  that 
Mr.  Lincoln  took  any  public  part  in  the  discussion  until 
the  month  of  September,  but  it  is  very  clear  that  he 
not  only  carefully  watched  its  progress,  but  that  he 
studied  its  phases  of  development,  its  historical  origins, 
and  its  legal  bearings  with  close  industry,  and  gathered 
from  party  literature  and  legislative  documents  a  har 
vest  of  substantial  facts  and  data,  rather  than  the  wordy 
campaign  phrases  and  explosive  epithets  with  which 
more  impulsive  students  and  speakers  were  content 


96  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

to  produce  their  oratorical  effects.  Here  we  may  again 
quote  Mr.  Lincoln's  exact  written  statement  of  the 
manner  in  which  he  resumed  his  political  activity : 

"In  the  autumn  of  that  year  [1854]  he  took  the 
stump,  with  no  broader  practical  aim  or  object  than  to 
secure,  if  possible,  the  reelection  of  Hon.  Richard 
Yates  to  Congress.  His  speeches  at  once  attracted  a 
more  marked  attention  than  they  had  ever  before  done. 
As  the  canvass  proceeded  he  was  drawn  to  different 
parts  of  the  State,  outside  of  Mr.  Yates's  district. 
He  did  not  abandon  the  law,  but  gave  his  attention  by 
turns  to  that  and  politics.  The  State  Agricultural  Fair 
was  at  Springfield  that  year,  and  Douglas  was  an 
nounced  to  speak  there." 

The  new  question  had  created  great  excitement  and 
uncertainty  in  Illinois  politics,  and  there  were  abundant 
signs  that  it  was  beginning  to  break  up  the  organiza 
tion  of  both  the  Whig  and  the  Democratic  parties. 
This  feeling  brought  together  at  the  State  fair  an  un 
usual  number  of  local  leaders  from  widely  scattered 
counties,  and  almost  spontaneously  a  sort  of  political 
tournament  of  speech-making  broke  out.  In  this  Sen 
ator  Douglas,  doubly  conspicuous  by  his  championship 
of  the  Nebraska  Bill  in  Congress,  was  expected  to  play 
the  leading  part,  while  the  opposition,  by  a  common 
impulse,  called  upon  Lincoln  to  answer  him.  Lincoln 
performed  the  task  with  such  aptness  and  force,  with 
such  freshness  of  argument,  illustrations  from  history, 
and  citations  from  authorities,  as  secured  him  a  decided 
oratorical  triumph,  and  lifted  him  at  a  single  bound  to 
the  leadership  of  the  opposition  to  Douglas's  propa- 
gandism.  Two  weeks  later,  Douglas  and  Lincoln  met 
at  Peoria  in  a  similar  debate,  and  on  his  return  to 
Springfield  Lincoln  wrote  out  and  printed  his  speech 
in  full. 


THE  PEORIA  DEBATE  97 

The  reader  who  carefully  examines  this  speech  will 
at  once  be  impressed  with  the  genius  which  immediately 
made  Mr.  Lincoln  a  power  in  American  politics.  His 
grasp  of  the  subject  is  so  comprehensive,  his  statement 
so  clear,  his  reasoning  so  convincing,  his  language  so 
strong  and  eloquent  by  turns,  that  the  wonderful  power 
he  manifested  in  the  discussions  and  debates  of  the  six 
succeeding  years  does  not  surpass,  but  only  amplifies 
this,  his  first  examination  of  the  whole  brood  of  ques 
tions  relating  to  slavery  precipitated  upon  the  country 
by  Douglas's  repeal.  After  a  searching  history  of  the 
Missouri  Compromise,  he  attacks  the  demoralizing  ef 
fects  and  portentous  consequences  of  its  repeal. 

"This  declared  indifference,"  he  says,  "but,  as  I  must 
think,  covert  real  zeal  for  the  spread  of  slavery,  I  can 
not  but  hate.  I  hate  it  because  of  the  monstrous  injus 
tice  of  slavery  itself.  I  hate  it  because  it  deprives  our 
republican  example  of  its  just  influence  in  the  world; 
enables  the  enemies  of  free  institutions,  with  plausibil 
ity,  to  taunt  us  as  hypocrites ;  causes  the  real  friends  of 
freedom  to  doubt  our  sincerity;  and  especially  because 
it  forces  so  many  good  men  among  ourselves  into  an 
open  war  with  the  very  fundamental  principles  of  civil 
liberty,  criticizing  the  Declaration  of  Independence, 
and  insisting  that  there  is  no  right  principle  of  action 
but  self-interest.  .  .  .  Slavery  is  founded  in  the 
selfishness  of  man's  nature — opposition  to  it  in  his  love 
of  justice.  These  principles  are  an  eternal  antagonism, 
and  when  brought  into  collision  so  fiercely  as  slavery 
extension  brings  them,  shocks  and  throes  and  convul 
sions  must  ceaselessly  follow.  Repeal  the  Missouri 
Compromise,  repeal  all  compromises,  repeal  the  Declar 
ation  of  Independence,  repeal  all  past  history,  you  still 
cannot  repeal  human  nature.  It  still  will  be  the  abun 
dance  of  man's  heart  that  slavery  extension  is  wrong, 


98  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

and  out  of  the  abundance  of  his  heart  his  mouth  will 
continue  to  speak." 

With  argument  as  impetuous,  and  logic  as  inexor 
able,  he  disposes  of  Douglas's  plea  of  popular  sov 
ereignty  : 

"Here,  or  at  Washington,  I  would  not  trouble  my 
self  with  the  oyster  laws  of  Virginia,  or  the  cranberry 
laws  of  Indiana.  The  doctrine  of  self-government  is 
right — absolutely  and  eternally  right — but  it  has  no 
just  application  as  here  attempted.  Or  perhaps  I 
should  rather  say,  that  whether  it  has  such  application 
depends  upon  whether  a  negro  is  not  or  is  a  man.  If 
he  is  not  a  man,  in  that  case,  he  who  is  a  man  may,  as 
a  matter  of  self-government,  do  just  what  he  pleases 
with  him.  But  if  the  negro  is  a  man,  is  it  not  to  that 
extent  a  total  destruction  of  self-government  to  say 
that  he  too  shall  not  govern  himself  ?  When  the  white 
man  governs  himself,  that  is  self-government;  but 
when  he  governs  himself  and  also  governs  another  man, 
that  is  more  than  self-government — that  is  despotism. 
I  particularly  object  to  the  new  position  which 
the  avowed  principle  of  this  Nebraska  law  gives  to 
slavery  in  the  body  politic.  I  object  to  it  because  it 
assumes  that  there  can  be  moral  right  in  the  enslaving 
of  one  man  by  another.  I  object  to  it  as  a  dangerous 
dalliance  for  a  free  people — a  sad  evidence  that,  feeling 
prosperity,  we  forget  right ;  that  liberty,  as  a  principle, 
we  have  ceased  to  revere.  .  .  .  Little  by  little, 
but  steadily  as  man's  march  to  the  grave,  we  have  been 
giving  up  the  old  for  the  new  faith.  Near  eighty  years 
ago  we  began  by  declaring  that  all  men  are  created 
equal;  but  now,  from  that  beginning,  we  have  run 
down  to  the  other  declaration,  that  for  some  men  to 
enslave  others  is  a  'sacred  right  of  self-government/ 
These  principles  cannot  stand  together.  They  are  as 
opposite  as  God  and  Mammon." 


CANDIDATE  FOR  SENATE  99 

If  one  compares  the  serious  tone  of  this  speech  with 
the  hard  cider  and  coon-skin  buncombe  of  the  Harrison 
campaign  of  1840,  and  its  lofty  philosophical  thought 
with  the  humorous  declamation  of  the  Taylor  cam 
paign  of  1848,  the  speaker's  advance  in  mental  devel 
opment  at  once  becomes  apparent.  In  this  single  effort 
Mr.  Lincoln  had  risen  from  the  class  of  the  politician 
to  the  rank  of  the  statesman.  There  is  a  well-founded 
tradition  that  Douglas,  disconcerted  and  troubled  by 
Lincoln's  unexpected  manifestation  of  power  in  the 
Springfield  and  Peoria  debates,  sought  a  friendly  inter 
view  with  his  opponent,  and  obtained  from  him  an 
agreement  that  neither  one  of  them  would  make  any 
further  speeches  before  the  election. 

The  local  interest  in  the  campaign  was  greatly  height 
ened  by  the  fact  that  the  term  of  Douglas's  Democratic 
colleague  in  the  United  States  Senate  was  about  to 
expire,  and  that  the  State  legislature  to  be  elected  would 
have  the  choosing  of  his  successor.  It  is  not  probable 
that  Lincoln  built  much  hope  upon  this  coming  politi 
cal  chance,  as  the  Democratic  party  had  been  through 
out  the  whole  history  of  the  State  in  decided  political 
control.  It  turned  out,  nevertheless,  that  in  the  elec 
tion  held  on  November  7,  an  opposition  majority  of 
members  of  the  legislature  was  chosen,  and  Lincoln 
became,  to  outward  appearances,  the  most  available 
opposition  candidate.  But  party  disintegration  had 
been  only  partial.  Lincoln  and  his  party  friends  still 
called  themselves  Whigs,  though  they  could  muster 
only  a  minority  of  the  total  membership  of  the  legisla 
ture.  The  so-called  Anti-Nebraska  Democrats,  oppos 
ing  Douglas  and  his  followers,  were  still  too  full  of 
traditional  party  prejudice  to  help  elect  a  pronounced 
Whig  to  the  United  States  Senate,  though  as  strongly 
"Anti-Nebraska"  as  themselves.  Five  of  them  brought 
forward,  and  stubbornly  voted  for,  Lyman  Trumbull, 


ioo  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

an  Anti-Nebraska  Democrat  of  ability,  who  had  been 
chosen  representative  in  Congress  from  the  eighth 
Illinois  District  in  the  recent  election.  On  the  ninth 
ballot  it  became  evident  to  Lincoln  that  there  was  dan 
ger  of  a  new  Democratic  candidate,  neutral  on  the 
Nebraska  question,  being  chosen.  In  this  contingency, 
he  manifested  a  personal  generosity  and  political  sagac 
ity  far  above  the  comprehension  of  the  ordinary  smart 
politician.  He  advised  and  prevailed  upon  his  Whig 
supporters  to  vote  for  Trumbull,  and  thus  secure  a  vote 
in  the  United  States  Senate  against  slavery  extension. 
He  had  rightly  interpreted  both  statesmanship  and 
human  nature.  His  personal  sacrifice  on  this  occasion 
contributed  essentially  to  the  coming  political  regen 
eration  of  his  State ;  and  the  five  Anti-Nebraska  Dem 
ocrats,  who  then  wrought  his  defeat,  became  his  most 
devoted  personal  followers  and  efficient  allies  in  his 
own  later  political  triumph,  which  adverse  currents, 
however,  were  still  to  delay  to  a  tantalizing  degree. 
The  circumstances  of  his  defeat  at  that  critical  stage 
of  his  career  must  have  seemed  especially  irritating, 
yet  he  preserved  a  most  remarkable  equanimity  of  tem 
per.  "I  regret  my  defeat  moderately,"  he  wrote  to  a 
sympathizing  friend,  "but  I  am  not  nervous  about  it." 

We  may  fairly  infer  that  while  Mr.  Lincoln  was  not 
"nervous,"  he  was  nevertheless  deeply  impressed  by 
the  circumstance  as  an  illustration  of  the  grave  nature 
of  the  pending  political  controversy.  A  letter  written 
by  him  about  half  a  year  later  to  a  friend  in  Kentucky, 
is  full  of  such  serious  reflection  as  to  show  that  the 
existing  political  conditions  in  the  United  States  had 
engaged  his  most  profound  thought  and  investigation. 

"That  spirit,"  he  wrote,  "which  desired  the  peaceful 
extinction  of  slavery  has  itself  become  extinct  with  the 
occasion  and  the  men  of  the  Revolution.  Under  the 


THE   KNOW-NOTHINGS  101 

impulse  of  that  occasion,  nearly  half  the  States  adopted 
systems  of  emancipation  at  once,  and  it  is  a  significant 
fact  that  not  a  single  State  has  done  the  like  since. 
So  far  as  peaceful  voluntary  emancipation  is  con 
cerned,  the  condition  of  the  negro  slave  in  America, 
scarcely  less  terrible  to  the  contemplation  of  a  free 
mind,  is  now  as  fixed  and  hopeless  of  change  for  the 
better  as  that  of  the  lost  souls  of  the  finally  impenitent. 
The  Autocrat  of  all  the  Russias  will  resign  his  crown 
and  proclaim  his  subjects  free  republicans  sooner  than 
will  our  American  masters  voluntarily  give  up  their 
slaves.  Our  political  problem  now  is,  'Can  we  as  a 
nation  continue  together  permanently — forever — half 
slave  and  half  free?'  The  problem  is  too  mighty  for 
me — may  God,  in  his  mercy,  superintend  the  solution." 

Not  quite  three  years  later  Mr.  Lincoln  made  the 
concluding  problem  of  this  letter  the  text  of  a  famous 
speech.  On  the  day  before  his  first  inauguration  as 
President  of  the  United  States,  the  ''Autocrat  of  all 
the  Russias,"  Alexander  II,  by  imperial  decree  eman 
cipated  his  serfs;  while  six  weeks  after  the  inaugura 
tion,  the  "American  masters,"  headed  by  Jefferson 
Davis,  began  the  greatest  war  of  modern  times  to  per 
petuate  and  spread  the  institution  of  slavery. 

The  excitement  produced  by  the  repeal  of  the  Mis 
souri  Compromise  in  1854,  by  the  election  forays  of 
the  Missouri  Border  Ruffians  into  Kansas  in  1855,  and 
by  the  succeeding  civil  strife  in  1856  in  that  Territory, 
wrought  an  effective  transformation  of  political  parties 
in  the  Union,  in  preparation  for  the  presidential  election 
of  that  year.  This  transformation,  though  not  seri 
ously  checked,  was  very  considerably  complicated  by 
an  entirely  new  faction,  or  rather  by  the  sudden  revival 
of  an  old  one,  which  in  the  past  had  called  itself  Native 
Americanism,  and  now  assumed  the  name  of  the  Amer- 


102  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

lean  Party,  though  it  was  more  popularly  known  by  the 
nickname  of  "Know-Nothings,"  because  of  its  secret 
organization.  It  professed  a  certain  hostility  to  for 
eign-born  voters  and  to  the  Catholic  religion,  and 
demanded  a  change  in  the  naturalization  laws  from  a 
five  years'  to  a  twenty-one  years'  preliminary  residence. 
This  faction  had  gained  some  sporadic  successes  in 
Eastern  cities,  but  when  its  national  convention  met 
in  February,  1856,  to  nominate  candidates  for  Presi 
dent  and  Vice-President,  the  pending  slavery  question, 
that  it  had  hitherto  studiously  ignored,  caused  a  dis 
ruption  of  its  organization;  and  though  the  adhering 
delegates  nominated  Millard  Fillmore  for  President 
and  A.  J.  Donelson  for  Vice-President,  who  remained 
in  the  field  and  were  voted  for,  to  some  extent,  in  the 
presidential  election,  the  organization  was  present  only 
as  a  crippled  and  disturbing  factor,  and  disappeared 
totally  from  politics  in  the  following  years. 

Both  North  and  South,  party  lines  adjusted  them 
selves  defiantly  upon  the  single  issue,  for  or  against 
men  and  measures  representing  the  extension  or  re 
striction  of  slavery.  The  Democratic  party,  though 
radically  changing  its  constituent  elements,  retained 
the  party  name,  and  became  the  party  of  slavery  exten 
sion,  having  forced  the  repeal  and  supported  the  result 
ing  measures;  while  the  Whig  party  entirely  dis 
appeared,  its  members  in  the  Northern  States  joining 
the  Anti-Nebraska  Democrats  in  the  formation  of  the 
new  Republican  party.  Southern  Whigs  either  went 
boldly  into  the  Democratic  camp,  or  followed  for  a 
while  the  delusive  prospects  of  the  Know-Nothings. 

This  party  change  went  on  somewhat  slowly  in  the 
State  of  Illinois,  because  that  State  extended  in  terri 
torial  length  from  the  latitude  of  Massachusetts  to  that 
of  Virginia,  and  its  population  contained  an  equally 


THE   REPUBLICAN   PARTY  103 

diverse  local  sentiment.  The  northern  counties  had  at 
once  become  strongly  Anti-Nebraska ;  the  conservative 
Whig  counties  of  the  center  inclined  to  the  Know- 
Nothings ;  while  the  Kentuckians  and  Carolinians,  who 
had  settled  the  southern  end,  had  strong  antipathies 
to  what  they  called  abolitionism,  and  applauded  Douglas 
and  repeal. 

The  agitation,  however,  swept  on,  and  further  hesi 
tation  became  impossible.  Early  in  1856  Mr.  Lincoln 
began  to  take  an  active  part  in  organizing  the  Republi 
can  party.  He  attended  a  small  gathering  of  Anti- 
Nebraska  editors  in  February,  at  Decatur,  who  issued 
a  call  for  a  mass  convention  which  met  at  Blooming- 
ton  in  May,  at  which  the  Republican  party  of  Illinois 
was  formally  constituted  by  an  enthusiastic  gathering 
of  local  leaders  who  had  formerly  been  bitter  antago 
nists,  but  who  now  joined  their  efforts  to  resist  slavery 
extension.  They  formulated  an  emphatic  but  not 
radical  platform,  and  through  a  committee  selected  a 
composite  ticket  of  candidates  for  State  offices,  which 
the  convention  approved  by  acclamation.  The  occasion 
remains  memorable  because  of  the  closing  address  made 
by  Mr.  Lincoln  in  one  of  his  most  impressive  oratori 
cal  moods.  So  completely  were  his  auditors  carried 
away  by  the  force  of  his  denunciation  of  existing  poli 
tical  evils,  and  by  the  eloquence  of  his  appeal  for  har 
mony  and  union  to  redress  them,  that  neither  a  ver 
batim  report  nor  even  an  authentic  abstract  was  made 
during  its  delivery :  but  the  lifting  inspiration  of  its 
periods  will  never  fade  from  the  memory  of  those  who 
heard  it. 

About  three  weeks  later,  the  first  national  convention 
of  the  Republican  party  met  at  Philadelphia,  and  nom 
inated  John  C.  Fremont  of  California  for  President. 
There  was  a  certain  fitness  in  this  selection,  from  the 


104  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

fact  that  he  had  been  elected  to  the  United  States  Sen 
ate  when  California  applied  for  admission  as  a  free 
State,  and  that  the  resistance  of  the  South  to  her  admis 
sion  had  been  the  entering  wedge  of  the  slavery  agita 
tion  of  1850.  This,  however,  was  in  reality  a  minor 
consideration.  It  was  rather  his  romantic  fame  as  a 
daring  Rocky  Mountain  explorer,  appealing  strongly 
to  popular  imagination  and  sympathy,  which  gave 
him  prestige  as  a  presidential  candidate. 

It  was  at  this  point  that  the  career  of  Abraham  Lin 
coln  had  a  narrow  and  fortunate  escape  from  a  pre 
mature  and  fatal  prominence.  The  Illinois  Bloom- 
ington  convention  had  sent  him  as  a  delegate  to  the 
Philadelphia  convention ;  and,  no  doubt  very  unex 
pectedly  to  himself,  on  the  first  ballot  for  a  candidate 
for  Vice-President  he  received  one  hundred  and  ten 
votes  against  two  hundred  and  fifty-nine  votes  for  Wil 
liam  L.  Dayton  of  New  Jersey,  upon  which  the  choice 
of  Mr.  Dayton  was  at  once  made  unanimous.  But  the 
incident  proves  that  Mr.  Lincoln  was  already  gaining 
a  national  fame  among  the  advanced  leaders  of  politi 
cal  thought.  Happily,  a  mysterious  Providence  re 
served  him  for  larger  and  nobler  uses. 

The  nominations  thus  made  at  Philadelphia  com 
pleted  the  array  for  the  presidential  battle  of  1856. 
The  Democratic  national  convention  had  met  at  Cin 
cinnati  on  June  2,  and  nominated  James  Buchanan  for 
President  and  John  C.  Breckinridge  for  Vice-Presi 
dent.  Its  work  presented  two  points  of  noteworthy 
interest,  namely:  that  the  South,  in  an  arrogant  pro- 
slavery  dictatorship,  relentlessly  cast  aside  the  claims 
of  Douglas  and  Pierce,  who  had  effected  the  repeal 
of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  and  nominated  Bu 
chanan,  in  apparently  sure  confidence  of  that  super- 
serviceable  zeal  in  behalf  of  slavery  which  he  so  obedi- 


CAMPAIGN   SPEECHES  105 

ently  rendered ;  also,  that  in  a  platform  of  intolerable 
length  there  was  such  a  cunning  ambiguity  of  word 
and  concealment  of  sense,  such  a  double  dealing  of 
phrase  and  meaning,  as  to  render  it  possible  that  the 
pro-slavery  Democrats  of  the  South  and  some  anti- 
slavery  Democrats  of  the  North  might  join  for  the 
last  time  to  elect  a  "Northern  man  with  Southern  prin 
ciples." 

Again,  in  this  campaign,  as  in  several  former  presi 
dential  elections,  Mr.  Lincoln  was  placed  upon  the 
electoral  ticket  of  Illinois,  and  he  made  over  fifty 
speeches  in  his  own  and  adjoining  States  in  behalf  of 
Fremont  and  Dayton.  Not  one  of  these  speeches  was 
reported  in  full,  but  the  few  fragments  which  have  been 
preserved  show  that  he  occupied  no  doubtful  ground 
on  the  pending  issues.  Already  the  Democrats  were 
raising  the  potent  alarm  cry  that  the  Republican  party 
was  sectional,  and  that  its  success  would  dissolve  the 
Union.  Mr.  Lincoln  did  not  then  dream  that  he  would 
ever  have  to  deal  practically  with  such  a  contingency, 
but  his  mind  was  very  clear  as  to  the  method  of  meet 
ing  it.  Speaking  for  the  Republican  party,  he  said : 

"But  the  Union  in  any  event  will  not  be  dissolved. 
We  don't  want  to  dissolve  it,  and  if  you  attempt  it,  we 
won't  let  you.  With  the  purse  and  sword,  the  army 
and  navy  and  treasury,  in  our  hands  and  at  our  com 
mand,  you  could  not  do  it.  This  government  would  be 
very  weak,  indeed,  if  a  majority,  with  a  disciplined 
army  and  navy  and  a  well-filled  treasury,  could  not 
preserve  itself  when  attacked  by  an  unarmed,  undis 
ciplined,  unorganized  minority.  All  this  talk  about  the 
dissolution  of  the  Union  is  humbug,  nothing  but  folly. 
We  do  not  want  to  dissolve  the  Union;  you  shall  not." 

While  the  Republican  party  was  much  cast  down 
by  the  election  of  Buchanan  in  November,  the  Demo- 


io6  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

crats  found  significant  cause  for  apprehension  in  the 
unexpected  strength  with  which  the  Fremont  ticket 
had  been  supported  in  the  free  States.  Especially  was 
this  true  in  Illinois,  where  the  adherents  of  Fremont 
and  Fillmore  had  formed  a  fusion,  and  thereby  elected 
a  Republican  governor  and  State  officers.  One  of  the 
strong  elements  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  leadership  was  the 
cheerful  hope  he  was  always  able  to  inspire  in  his  fol 
lowers,  and  his  abiding  faith  in  the  correct  political 
instincts  of  popular  majorities.  This  trait  was  happily 
exemplified  in  a  speech  he  made  at  a  Republican  ban 
quet  in  Chicago  about  a  month  after  the  presidential 
election.  Recalling  the  pregnant  fact  that  though  Bu 
chanan  gained  a  majority  of  the  electoral  vote,  he  was 
in  a  minority  of  about  four  hundred  thousand  of  the 
popular  vote  for  President,  Mr.  Lincoln  thus  summed 
up  the  chances  of  Republican  success  in  the  future : 

"Our  government  rests  in  public  opinion.  Whoever 
can  change  public  opinion,  can  change  the  government, 
practically,  just  so  much.  Public  opinion  on  any  sub 
ject  always  has  a  'central  idea,'  from  which  all  its 
minor  thoughts  radiate.  That  'central  idea'  in  our  po 
litical  public  opinion  at  the  beginning  was,  and  until 
recently  has  continued  to  be,  'the  equality  of  men.'  And 
although  it  has  always  submitted  patiently  to  whatever 
of  inequality  there  seemed  to  be  as  matter  of  actual 
necessity,  its  constant  working  has  been  a  steady  prog 
ress  towards  the  practical  equality  of  all  men.  The  late 
presidential  election  was  a  struggle  by  one  party  to 
discard  that  central  idea  and  to  substitute  for  it  the 
opposite  idea  that  slavery  is  right  in  the  abstract; 
the  workings  of  which  as  a  central  idea  may  be  the 
perpetuity  of  human  slavery  and  its  extension  to  all 
countries  and  colors.  .  .  .  All  of  us  who  did 
not  vote  for  Mr.  Buchanan,  taken  together,  are  a  ma- 


CHICAGO  BANQUET  SPEECH          107 

jority  of  four  hundred  thousand.  But  in  the  late 
contest  we  were  divided  between  Fremont  and  Fill- 
more.  Can  we  not  come  together  for  the  future?  Let 
every  one  who  really  believes,  and  is  resolved,  that  free 
society  is  not  and  shall  not  be  a  failure,  and  who  can 
conscientiously  declare  that  in  the  past  contest  he  has 
done  only  what  he  thought  best — let  every  such  one 
have  charity  to  believe  that  every  other  one  can  say 
as  much.  Thus  let  bygones  be  bygones;  let  past  dif 
ferences  as  nothing  be ;  and  with  steady  eye  on  the  real 
issue,  let  us  reinaugurate  the  good  old  'central  ideas' 
of  the  republic.  We  can  do  it.  The  human  heart  is 
with  us ;  God  is  with  us.  We  shall  again  be  able,  not  to 
declare  that  'all  States  as  States  are  equal,'  nor  yet  that 
'all  citizens  as  citizens  are  equal,'  but  to  renew  the 
broader,  better  declaration,  including  both  these  and 
much  more,  that  'all  men  are  created  equal.' ' 


VIII 

Buchanan  Elected  President — The  Dred  Scott  Decision 
— Douglas's  Springfield  Speech,  1857 — Lincoln's  An 
swering  Speech — Criticism  of  Dred  Scott  Decision — 
Kansas  Civil  War — Buchanan  Appoints  Walker — 
Walker's  Letter  on  Kansas — The  Lecompton  Constitu 
tion — Revolt  of  Douglas 

THE  election  of  1856  once  more  restored  the  Dem 
ocratic  party  to  full  political  control  in  national 
affairs.  James  Buchanan  was  elected  President  to  suc 
ceed  Pierce;  the  Senate  continued,  as  before,  to  have 
a  decided  Democratic  majority;  and  a  clear  Demo 
cratic  majority  of  twenty-five  was  chosen  to  the  House 
of  Representatives  to  succeed  the  heavy  opposition 
majority  of  the  previous  Congress. 

Though  the  new  House  did  not  organize  till  a  year 
after  it  was  elected,  the  certainty  of  its  coming  action 
was  sufficient  not  only  to  restore,  but  greatly  to  accel 
erate  the  pro-slavery  reaction  begun  by  the  repeal  of  the 
Missouri  Compromise.  This  impending  drift  of  na 
tional  policy  now  received  a  powerful  impetus  by  an 
act  of  the  third  coordinate  branch,  the  judicial  depart 
ment  of  the  government. 

Very  unexpectedly  to  the  public  at  large,  the  Su 
preme  Court  of  the  United  States,  a  few  days  after 
Buchanan's  inauguration,  announced  its  judgment  in 
what  quickly  became  famous  as  the  Dred  Scott  deci 
sion.  Dred  Scott,  a  negro  slave  in  Missouri,  sued  for 
his  freedom  on  the  ground  that  his  master  had  taken 

1 08 


THE  DEED  SCOTT  DECISION          109 

him  to  reside  in  the  State  of  Illinois  and  the  Territory 
of  Wisconsin,  where  slavery  was  prohibited  by  law. 
The  question  had  been  twice  decided  by  Missouri 
courts,  once  for  and  then  against  Dred  Scott's  claim ; 
and  now  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  after 
hearing  the  case  t\vice  elaborately  argued  by  eminent 
counsel,  finally  decided  that  Dred  Scott,  being  a  negro, 
could  not  become  a  citizen,  and  therefore  was  not  en 
titled  to  bring  suit.  This  branch,  under  ordinary  pre 
cedent,  simply  threw  the  case  out  of  court;  but  in 
addition,  the  decision,  proceeding  with  what  lawyers 
call  obiter  dictum,  went  on  to  declare  that  under  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States  neither  Congress  nor 
a  territorial  legislature  possessed  power  to  prohibit 
slavery  in  Federal  Territories. 

The  whole  country  immediately  flared  up  with  the 
agitation  of  the  slavery  question  in  this  new  form.  The 
South  defended  the  decision  with  heat,  the  North  pro 
tested  against  it  with  indignation,  and  the  controversy 
was  greatly  intensified  by  a  phrase  in  the  opinion  of 
Chief  Justice  Taney,  that  at  the  time  of  the  Declara 
tion  of  Independence  negroes  were  considered  by  gen 
eral  public  opinion  to  be  so  far  inferior  "that  they  had 
no  rights  which  the  white  man  was  bound  to  respect." 

This  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court  placed  Senator 
Douglas  in  a  curious  dilemma.  While  it  served  to  in 
dorse  and  fortify  his  course  in  repealing  the  Missouri 
Compromise,  it,  on  the  other  hand,  totally  negatived 
his  theory  by  which  he  had  sought  to  make  the  repeal 
palatable,  that  the  people  of  a  Territory,  by  the  exercise 
of  his  great  principle  of  popular  sovereignty,  could 
decide  the  slavery  question  for  themselves.  But,  being 
a  subtle  sophist,  he  sought  to  maintain  a  show  of  con 
sistency  by  an  ingenious  evasion.  In  the  month  of 
June  following  the  decision,  he  made  a  speech  at 


i  io  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Springfield,  Illinois,  in  which  he  tentatively  announced 
what  in  the  next  year  became  widely  celebrated  as  his 
Freeport  doctrine,  and  was  immediately  denounced 
by  his  political  confreres  of  the  South  as  serious  party 
heterodoxy.  First  lauding  the  Supreme  Court  as  "the 
highest  judicial  tribunal  on  earth,"  and  declaring  that 
violent  resistance  to  its  decrees  must  be  put  down  by 
the  strong  arm  of  the  government,  he  went  on  thus  to 
define  a  master's  right  to  his  slave  in  Kansas : 

"While  the  right  continues  in  full  force  under  the 
guarantees  of  the  Constitution,  and  cannot  be  divested 
or  alienated  by  an  act  of  Congress,  it  necessarily  re 
mains  a  barren  and  a  worthless  right  unless  sustained, 
protected,  and  enforced  by  appropriate  police  regula 
tions  and  local  legislation  prescribing  adequate  reme 
dies  for  its  violation.  These  regulations  and  remedies 
must  necessarily  depend  entirely  upon  the  will  and 
wishes  of  the  people  of  the  Territory,  as  they  can  only 
be  prescribed  by  the  local  legislatures.  Hence,  the 
great  principle  of  popular  sovereignty  and  self-govern 
ment  is  sustained  and  firmly  established  by  the  author 
ity  of  this  decision." 

Both  the  legal  and  political  aspects  of  the  new  ques 
tion  immediately  engaged  the  earnest  attention  of  Mr. 
Lincoln;  and  his  splendid  power  of  analysis  set  its 
ominous  portent  in  a  strong  light.  He  made  a  speech 
in  reply  to  Douglas  about  two  weeks  after,  subjecting 
the  Dred  Scott  decision  to  a  searching  and  eloquent 
criticism.  He  said : 

"That  decision  declares  two  propositions — first, 
that  a  negro  cannot  sue  in  the  United  States  courts; 
and  secondly,  that  Congress  cannot  prohibit  slavery 
in  the  Territories.  It  was  made  by  a  divided  court — 
dividing  differently  on  the  different  points.  Judge 
Douglas  does  not  discuss  the  merits  of  the  decision, 


THE  DRED  SCOTT  DECISION         in 

and  in  that  respect  I  shall  follow  his  example,  believing 
I  could  no  more  improve  on  McLean  and  Curtis  than 
he  could  on  Taney.  .  .  .  We  think  the  Dred  Scott 
decision  was  erroneous.  We  know  the  court  that  made 
it  has  often  overruled  its  own  decisions,  and  we  shall 
do  what  we  can  to  have  it  overrule  this.  We  offer  no 
resistance  to  it.  ...  If  this  important  decision 
had  been  made  by  the  unanimous  concurrence  of  the 
judges,  and  without  any  apparent  partizan  bias,  and  in 
accordance  with  legal  public  expectation  and  with  the 
steady  practice  of  the  departments  throughout  our  his 
tory,  and  had  been  in  no  part  based  on  assumed  his 
torical  facts  which  are  not  really  true;  or  if,  wanting 
in  some  of  these,  it  had  been  before  the  court  more  than 
once,  and  had  there  been  affirmed  and  reaffirmed 
through  a  course  of  years,  it  then  might  be,  perhaps 
would  be,  factious,  nay,  even  revolutionary,  not  to 
acquiesce  in  it  as  a  precedent.  But  when,  as  is  true, 
we  find  it  wanting  in  all  these  claims  to  the  public  con 
fidence,  it  is  not  resistance,  it  is  not  factious,  it  is  not 
even  disrespectful,  to  treat  it  as  not  having  yet  quite 
established  a  settled  doctrine  for  the  country. 

"The  Chief  Justice  does  not  directly  assert,  but 
plainly  assumes,  as  a  fact,  that  the  public  estimate  of 
the  black  man  is  more  favorable  now  than  it  was  in 
the  days  of  the  Revolution.  This  assumption  is  a  mis 
take.  In  some  trifling  particulars  the  condition  of  that 
race  has  been  ameliorated ;  but  as  a  whole,  in  this 
country,  the  change  between  then  and  now  is  decidedly 
the  other  way ;  and  their  ultimate  destiny  has  never  ap 
peared  so  hopeless  as  in  the  last  three  or  four  years. 
In  two  of  the  five  States — New  Jersey  and  North  Caro 
lina — that  then  gave  the  free  negro  the  right  of  voting, 
the  right  has  since  been  taken  away ;  and  in  the  third- 
New  York — it  has  been  greatly  abridged;  while  it  has 


ii2  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

not  been  extended,  so  far  as  I  know,  to  a  single  addi 
tional  State,  though  the  number  of  the  States  has  more 
than  doubled.  In  those  days,  as  I  understand,  masters 
could,  at  their  own  pleasure,  emancipate  their  slaves; 
but  since  then  such  legal  restraints  have  been  made 
upon  emancipation  as  to  amount  almost  to  prohibition. 
In  those  days,  legislatures  held  the  unquestioned  power 
to  abolish  slavery  in  their  respective  States,  but  now  it 
is  becoming  quite  fashionable  for  State  constitutions 
to  withhold  that  power  from  the  legislatures.  In  those 
days,  by  common  consent,  the  spread  of  the  black  man's 
bondage  to  the  new  countries  was  prohibited,  but  now 
Congress  decides  that  it  will  not  continue  the  prohibi 
tion,  and  the  Supreme  Court  decides  that  it  could  not 
if  it  would.  In  those  days,  our  Declaration  of  Inde 
pendence  was  held  sacred  by  all,  and  thought  to 
include  all ;  but  now,  to  aid  in  making  the  bondage 
of  the  negro  universal  and  eternal,  it  is  assailed  and 
sneered  at  and  construed,  and  hawked  at  and  torn, 
till,  if  its  framers  could  rise  from  their  graves,  they 
could  not  at  all  recognize  it.  All  the  powers  of  earth 
seem  rapidly  combining  against  him.  Mammon  is 
after  him,  ambition  follows,  philosophy  follows,  and  the 
theology  of  the  clay  is  fast  joining  the  cry.  They  have 
him  in  his  prison-house ;  they  have  searched  his  person, 
and  left  no  prying  instrument  with  him.  One  after  an 
other,  they  have  closed  the  heavy  iron  doors  upon  him ; 
and  now  they  have  him,  as  it  were,  bolted  in  with  a 
lock  of  a  hundred  keys,  which  can  never  be  unlocked 
without  the  concurrence  of  every  key — the  keys  in  the 
hands  of  a  hundred  different  men,  and  they  scattered 
to  a  hundred  different  and  distant  places;  and  they 
stand  musing  as  to  what  invention,  in  all  the  dominions 
of  mind  and  matter,  can  be  produced  to  make  the  im 
possibility  of  his  escape  more  complete  than  it  is." 


KANSAS  CIVIL  WAR  113 

There  is  not  room  to  quote  the  many  other  equally 
forcible  points  in  Mr.  Lincoln's  speech.  Our  nar 
rative  must  proceed  to  other  significant  events  in  the 
great  pro-slavery  reaction.  Thus  far  the  Kansas  experi 
ment  had  produced  nothing  but  agitation,  strife,  and 
bloodshed.  First  the  storm  in  Congress  over  repeal ; 
then  a  mad  rush  of  emigration  to  occupy  the  Territory. 
This  was  followed  by  the  Border  Ruffian  invasions, 
in  which  Missouri  voters  elected  a  bogus  territorial 
legislature,  and  the  bogus  legislature  enacted  a  code 
of  bogus  laws.  In  turn,  the  more  rapid  emigration 
from  free  States  filled  the  Territory  with  a  majority 
of  free-State  voters,  who  quickly  organized  a  compact 
free-State  party,  which  sent  a  free-State  constitution, 
known  as  the  Topeka  Constitution,  to  Congress,  and 
applied  for  admission.  This  movement  proved  barren, 
because  the  two  houses  of  Congress  were  divided  in 
sentiment.  Meanwhile,  President  Pierce  recognized 
the  bogus  laws,  and  issued  proclamations  declaring  the 
free-State  movement  illegal  and  insurrectionary;  and 
the  free-State  party  had  in  its  turn  baffled  the  enforce 
ment  of  the  bogus  laws,  partly  by  concerted  action  of 
nonconformity  and  neglect,  partly  by  open  defiance. 
The  whole  finally  culminated  in  a  chronic  border 
war  bet\veen  Missouri  raiders  on  one  hand,  and  free- 
State  guerrillas  on  the  other;  and  it  became  necessary 
to  send  Federal  troops  to  check  the  disorder.  These 
were  instructed  by  Jefferson  Davis,  then  Secretary  of 
War,  that  "rebellion  must  be  crushed."  The  future 
Confederate  President  little  suspected  the  tremendous 
prophetic  import  of  his  order.  The  most  significant 
illustration  of  the  underlying  spirit  of  the  struggle 
was  that  President  Pierce  had  successively  appointed 
three  Democratic  governors  for  the  Territory,  who, 
starting  with  pro-slavery  bias,  all  became  free-State 


ii4  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

partizans,  and  were  successively  insulted  and  driven 
from  the  Territory  by  the  pro-slavery  faction  when  in 
manly  protest  they  refused  to  carry  out  the  behests  of 
the  Missouri  conspiracy.  After  a  three  years'  struggle 
neither  faction  had  been  successful,  neither  party  was 
satisfied;  and  the  administration  of  Pierce  bequeathed 
to  its  successor  the  same  old  question  embittered  by 
rancor  and  defeat. 

President  Buchanan  began  his  administration  with  a 
boldly  announced  pro-slavery  policy.  In  his  inaugural 
address  he  invoked  the  popular  acceptance  of  the  Dred 
Scott  decision,  which  he  already  knew  was  coming; 
and  a  few  months  later  declared  in  a  public  letter  that 
slavery  "exists  in  Kansas  under  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States.  .  .  .  How  it  ever  could  have  been 
seriously  doubted  is  a  mystery."  He  chose  for  the 
governorship  of  Kansas,  Robert  J.  Walker,  a  citizen 
of  Mississippi  of  national  fame  and  of  pronounced  pro- 
slavery  views,  who  accepted  his  dangerous  mission 
only  upon  condition  that  a  new  constitution,  to  be 
formed  for  that  State,  must  be  honestly  submitted  to 
the  real  voters  of  Kansas  for  adoption  or  rejection. 
President  Buchanan  and  his  advisers,  as  well  as  Sena 
tor  Douglas,  accepted  this  condition  repeatedly  and  em 
phatically.  But  when  the  new  governor  went  to  the 
Territory,  he  soon  became  convinced,  and  reported  to 
his  chief,  that  to  make  a  slave  State  of  Kansas  was  a 
delusive  hope.  "Indeed,"  he  wrote,  "it  is  universally 
admitted  here  that  the  only  real  question  is  this : 
whether  Kansas  shall  be  a  conservative,  constitutional, 
Democratic,  and  ultimately  free  State,  or  whether  it 
shall  be  a  Republican  and  abolition  State." 

As  a  compensation  for  the  disappointment,  however, 
he  wrote  later  direct  to  the  President: 

"But  we  must  have  a  slave  State  out  of  the  south- 


THE   LECOMPTON   CONSTITUTION    115 

western  Indian  Territory,  and  then  a  calm  will  follow ; 
Cuba  be  acquired  with  the  acquiescence  of  the  North; 
and  your  administration,  having  in  reality  settled  the 
slavery  question,  be  regarded  in  all  time  to  come  as 
a  re-signing  and  re-sealing  of  the  Constitution.  .  .  . 
I  shall  be  pleased  soon  to  hear  from  you.  Cuba !  Cuba ! 
(and  Porto  Rico,  if  possible)  should  be  the  counter 
sign  of  your  administration,  and  it  will  close  in  a  blaze 
of  glory." 

And  the  governor  was  doubtless  much  gratified  to 
receive  the  President's  unqualified  indorsement  in  re 
ply  :  "On  the  question  of  submitting  the  constitution 
to  the  bona  fide  resident  settlers  of  Kansas,  I  am  willing 
to  stand  or  fall." 

The  sequel  to  this  heroic  posturing  of  the  chief 
magistrate  is  one  of  the  most  humiliating  chapters  in 
American  politics.  Attendant  circumstances  leave  little 
doubt  that  a  portion  of  Mr.  Buchanan's  cabinet,  in  se 
cret  league  and  correspondence  with  the  pro-slavery 
Missouri-Kansas  cabal,  aided  and  abetted  the  framing 
and  adoption  of  what  is  known  to  history  as  the  Le- 
compton  Constitution,  an  organic  instrument  of  a  radi 
cal  pro-slavery  type;  that  its  pretended  submission  to 
popular  vote  was  under  phraseology,  and  in  combina 
tion  with  such  gigantic  electoral  frauds  and  dictatorial 
procedure,  as  to  render  the  whole  transaction  a  mockery 
of  popular  government ;  still  worse,  that  President  Bu 
chanan  himself,  proving  too  weak  in  insight  and  will  to 
detect  the  intrigue  or  resist  the  influence  of  his  malign 
counselors,  abandoned  his  solemn  pledges  to  Governor 
Walker,  adopted  the  Lecompton  Constitution  as  an  ad 
ministration  measure,  and  recommended  it  to  Congress 
in  a  special  message,  announcing  dogmatically:  "Kan 
sas  is  therefore  at  this  moment  as  much  a  slave  State  as 
Georgia  or  South  Carolina." 


n6  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

The  radical  pro-slavery  attitude  thus  assumed  by 
President  Buchanan  and  Southern  leaders  threw  the 
Democratic  party  of  the  free  States  into  serious  dis 
array,  while  upon  Senator  Douglas  the  blow  fell  with 
the  force  of  party  treachery — almost  of  personal  in 
dignity.  The  Dred  Scott  decision  had  rudely  brushed 
aside  his  theory  of  popular  sovereignty,  and  now  the 
Lecompton  Constitution  proceedings  brutally  trampled 
it  down  in  practice.  The  disaster  overtook  him,  too, 
at  a  critical  moment.  His  senatorial  term  was  about 
to  expire;  the  next  Illinois  legislature  would  elect  his 
successor.  The  prospect  was  none  too  bright  for  him, 
for  at  the  late  presidential  election  Illinois  had  chosen 
Republican  State  officers.  He  was  compelled  either  to 
break  his  pledges  to  the  Democratic  voters  of  Illinois, 
or  to  lead  a  revolt  against  President  Buchanan  and  the 
Democratic  leaders  in  Congress.  Party  disgrace  at 
Washington,  or  popular  disgrace  in  Illinois,  were  the 
alternatives  before  him.  To  lose  his  reelection  to  the 
Senate  would  almost  certainly  end  his  public  career. 
When,  therefore,  Congress  met  in  December,  1857, 
Douglas  boldly  attacked  and  denounced  the  Lecompton 
Constitution,  even  before  the  President  had  recom 
mended  it  in  his  special  message. 

"Stand  by  the  doctrine,"  he  said,  "that  leaves  the 
people  perfectly  free  to  form  and  regulate  their  insti 
tutions  for  themselves,  in  their  own  way,  and  your 
party  will  be  united  and  irresistible  in  power. 
If  Kansas  wants  a  slave-State  constitution,  she  has  a 
right  to  it;  if  she  wants  a  free-State  constitution,  she 
has  a  right  to  it.  It  is  none  of  my  business  which  way 
the  slavery  clause  is  decided.  I  care  not  whether  it  is 
voted  down  or  voted  up.  Do  you  suppose,  after  the 
pledges  of  my  honor  that  I  would  go  for  that  principle 
and  leave  the  people  to  vote  as  they  choose,  that  I 


REVOLT  OF  DOUGLAS  117 

would  now  degrade  myself  by  voting  one  way  if  the 
slavery  clause  be  voted  down,  and  another  way  if  it 
be  voted  up?  I  care  not  how  that  vote  may  stand. 
.  .  Ignore  Lecompton ;  ignore  Topeka ;  treat  both 
those  party  movements  as  irregular  and  void ;  pass  a 
fair  bill — the  one  that  we  framed  ourselves  when  we 
were  acting  as  a  unit;  have  a  fair  election — and  you 
will  have  peace  in  the  Democratic  party,  and  peace 
throughout  the  country,  in  ninety  days.  The  people 
want  a  fair  vote.  They  will  never  be  satisfied  with 
out  it.  ...  But  if  this  constitution  is  to  be  forced 
down  our  throats  in  violation  of  the  fundamental  prin 
ciple  of  free  government,  under  a  mode  of  submission 
that  is  a  mockery  and  insult,  I  will  resist  it  to  the  last." 
Walker,  the  fourth  Democratic  governor  who  had 
now  been  sacrificed  to  the  interests  of  the  Kansas  pro- 
slavery  cabal,  also  wrote  a  sharp  letter  of  resignation 
denouncing  the  Lecompton  fraud  and  policy ;  and  such 
was  the  indignation  aroused  in  the  free  States,  that  al 
though  the  Senate  passed  the  Lecompton  Bill,  twenty- 
two  Northern  Democrats  joining  their  vote  to  that  of 
the  Republicans,  the  measure  was  defeated  in  the 
House  of  Representatives.  The  President  and  his 
Southern  partizans  bitterly  resented  this  defeat;  and 
the  schism  between  them,  on  the  one  hand,  and  Douglas 
and  his  adherents,  on  the  other,  became  permanent  and 
irreconcilable. 


IX 


The  Senatorial  Contest  in  Illinois — "House  Divided 
against  Itself  Speech — The  Lincoln-Douglas  Debates 
—The  Freeport  Doctrine — Douglas  Deposed  from 
Chairmanship  of  Committee  on  Territories — Benjamin 
on  Douglas — Lincoln's  Popular  Majority — Douglas 
Gains  Legislature — Greeley,  Crittenden,  et  al. — "The 
Fight  Must  Go  On" — Douglas's  Southern  Speeches — 
Senator  Brown's  Questions — Lincoln's  Warning  against 
Popular  Sovereignty — The  War  of  Pamphlets — Lin 
coln's  Ohio  Speeches — The  John  Brown  Raid — Lin 
coln's  Comment 

THE  hostility  of  the  Buchanan  administration  to 
Douglas  for  his  part  in  defeating  the  Lecompton 
Constitution,  and  the  multiplying  chances  against  him, 
served  only  to  stimulate  his  followers  in  Illinois  to 
greater  efforts  to  secure  his  reelection.  Precisely  the 
same  elements  inspired  the  hope  and  increased  the  en 
thusiasm  of  the  Republicans  of  the  State  to  accom 
plish  his  defeat.  For  a  candidate  to  oppose  the  "Little 
Giant,"  there  could  be  no  rival  in  the  Republican  ranks 
to  Abraham  Lincoln.  He  had  in  1854  yielded  his  pri 
ority  of  claim  to  Trumbull ;  he  alone  had  successfully 
encountered  Douglas  in  debate.  The  political  events 
themselves  seemed  to  have  selected  and  pitted  these 
two  champions  against  each  other.  Therefore,  when 
the  Illinois  State  convention  on  June  16,  1858,  passed 
by  acclamation  a  separate  resolution,  "That  Abraham 
Lincoln  is  the  first  and  only  choice  of  the  Republicans 

118 


SENATORIAL   CONTEST  119 

of  Illinois  for  the  United  States  Senate  as  the  successor 
of  Stephen  A.  Douglas,"  it  only  recorded  the  well- 
known  judgment  of  the  party.  After  its  routine  work 
was  finished,  the  convention  adjourned  to  meet  again 
in  the  hall  of  the  State  House  at  Springfield  at  eight 
o'clock  in  the  evening.  At  that  hour  Mr.  Lincoln  ap 
peared  before  the  assembled  delegates  and  delivered  a 
carefully  studied  speech,  which  has  become  historic. 
After  a  few  opening  sentences,  he  uttered  the  following 
significant  prediction : 

"  'A  house  divided  against  itself  cannot  stand/  I 
believe  this  government  cannot  endure  permanently, 
half  slave  and  half  free.  I  do  not  expect  the  Union  to 
be  dissolved — I  do  not  expect  the  house  to  fall — but  I 
do  expect  it  will  cease  to  be  divided.  It  will  become 
ail  one  thing  or  all  the  other.  Either  the  opponents  of 
slavery  will  arrest  the  further  spread  of  it,  and  place 
it  where  the  public  mind  shall  rest  in  the  belief  that  it 
is  in  course  of  ultimate  extinction ;  or  its  advocates  will 
push  it  forward  till  it  shall  become  alike  lawful  in  all 
the  States,  old  as  well  as  new,  North  as  well  as  South." 

Then  followed  his  critical  analysis  of  the  legislative 
objects  and  consequences  of  the  Nebraska  Bill,  and  the 
judicial  effects  and  doctrines  of  the  Dred  Scott  deci 
sion,  with  their  attendant  and  related  incidents.  The 
first  of  these  had  opened  all  the  national  territory  to 
slavery.  The  second  established  the  constitutional  in 
terpretation  that  neither  Congress  nor  a  territorial 
legislature  could  exclude  slavery  from  any  United 
States  territory.  The  President  had  declared  Kansas 
to  be  already  practically  a  slave  State.  Douglas  had 
announced  that  he  did  not  care  whether  slavery  was 
voted  down  or  voted  up.  Adding  to  these  many  other 
indications  of  current  politics,  Mr.  Lincoln  proceeded : 

'Tut  this  and  that  together,  and  we  have  another 


120  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

nice  little  niche,  which  we  may,  ere  long,  see  filled  with 
another  Supreme  Court  decision  declaring  that  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States  does  not  permit  a 
State  to  exclude  slavery  from  its  limits. 
Such  a  decision  is  all  that  slavery  now  lacks  of  being 
alike  lawful  in  all  the  States.  .  .  .  We  shall  lie 
down  pleasantly  dreaming  that  the  people  of  Missouri 
are  on  the  verge  of  making  their  State  free,  and  we 
shall  awake  to  the  reality,  instead,  that  the  Supreme 
Court  has  made  Illinois  a  slave  State." 

To  avert  this  danger,  Mr.  Lincoln  declared  it  was 
the  duty  of  Republicans  to  overthrow  both  Douglas 
and  the  Buchanan  political  dynasty. 

"Two  years  ago  the  Republicans  of  the  nation  mus 
tered  over  thirteen  hundred  thousand  strong.  We  did 
this  under  the  single  impulse  of  resistance  to  a  common 
danger,  with  every  external  circumstance  against  us. 
Of  strange,  discordant,  and  even  hostile  elements,  we 
gathered  from  the  four  winds,  and  formed  and  fought 
the  battle  through,  under  the  constant  hot  fire  of  a 
disciplined,  proud,  and  pampered  enemy.  Did  we 
brave  all  then  to  falter  now? — now,  when  that  same 
enemy  is  wavering,  dissevered,  and  belligerent?  The 
result  is  not  doubtful.  We  shall  not  fail — if  we  stand 
firm,  we  shall  not  fail.  Wise  counsels  may  accelerate 
or  mistakes  delay  it,  but,  sooner  or  later,  the  victory 
is  sure  to  come." 

Lincoln's  speech  excited  the  greatest  interest  every 
where  throughout  the  free  States.  The  grave  peril 
he  so  clearly  pointed  out  came  home  to  the  people  of  the 
North  almost  with  the  force  of  a  revelation ;  and  there 
after  their  eyes  were  fixed  upon  the  Illinois  senatorial 
campaign  with  undivided  attention.  Another  incident 
also  drew  to  it  the  equal  notice  and  interest  of  the  poli 
ticians  of  the  slave  States. 


THE  LINCOLN-DOUGLAS  DEBATES    121 

Within  a  month  from  the  date  of  Lincoln's  speech, 
Douglas  returned  from  Washington  and  began  his 
campaign  of  active  speech-making  in  Illinois.  The 
fame  he  had  acquired  as  the  champion  of  the  Nebraska 
Bill,  and,  more  recently,  the  prominence  into  which 
his  opposition  to  the  Lecompton  fraud  had  lifted  him 
in  Congress,  attracted  immense  crowds  to  his  meet 
ings,  and  for  a  few  clays  it  seemed  as  if  the  mere  con 
tagion  of  popular  enthusiasm  would  submerge  all  in 
telligent  political  discussion.  To  counteract  this,  Mr. 
Lincoln,  at  the  advice  of  his  leading  friends,  sent  him 
a  letter  challenging  him  to  joint  public  debate.  Doug 
las  accepted  the  challenge,  but  with  evident  hesitation; 
and  it  was  arranged  that  they  should  jointly  address  the 
same  meetings  at  seven  towns  in  the  State,  on  dates 
extending  through  August,  September,  and  October. 
The  terms  were,  that,  alternately,  one  should  speak  an 
hour  in  opening,  the  other  an  hour  and  a  half  in  reply, 
and  the  first  again  have  half  an  hour  in  closing.  This 
placed  the  contestants  upon  an  equal  footing  before 
their  audiences.  Douglas's  senatorial  prestige  afforded 
him  no  advantage.  Face  to  face  with  the  partizans  of 
both,  gathered  in  immense  numbers  and  alert  with  crit 
ical  and  jealous  watchfulness,  there  was  no  evading  the 
square,  cold,  rigid  test  of  skill  in  argument  and  truth 
in  principle.  The  processions  and  banners,  the  music 
and  fireworks,  of  both  parties,  were  stilled  and  forgot 
ten  while  the  audience  listened  with  high-strung  nerves 
to  the  intellectual  combat  of  three  hours'  duration. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  give  the  scope  and  spirit 
of  these  famous  debates  in  the  space  allotted  to  these 
pages,  but  one  of  the  turning-points  in  the  oratorical 
contest  needs  particular  mention.  Northern  Illinois, 
peopled  mostly  from  free  States,  and  southern  Illinois, 
peopled  mostly  from  slave  States,  were  radically  op- 


122  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

posed  in  sentiment  on  the  slavery  question;  even  the 
old  Whigs  of  central  Illinois  had  to  a  large  extent 
joined  the  Democratic  party,  because  of  their  ineradi 
cable  prejudice  against  what  they  stigmatized  as  "abo 
litionism."  To  take  advantage  of  this  prejudice, 
Douglas,  in  his  opening  speech  in  the  first  debate  at 
Ottawa  in  northern  Illinois,  propounded  to  Lincoln  a 
series  of  questions  designed  to  commit  him  to  strong 
antislavery  doctrines.  He  wanted  to  know  Avhether 
Mr.  Lincoln  stood  pledged  to  the  repeal  of  the  fugi 
tive-slave  law;  against  the  admission  of  any  more 
slave  States;  to  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  District 
of  Columbia;  to  the  prohibition  of  the  slave  trade 
between  different  States;  to  prohibit  slavery  in  all  the 
Territories ;  to  oppose  the  acquisition  of  any  new  terri 
tory  unless  slavery  were  first  prohibited  therein. 

In  their  second  joint  debate  at  Freeport,  Lincoln 
answered  that  he  was  pledged  to  none  of  these  proposi 
tions,  except  the  prohibition  of  slavery  in  all  Terri 
tories  of  the  United  States.  In  turn  he  propounded 
four  questions  to  Douglas,  the  second  of  which  was : 

"Can  the  people  of  a  United  States  Territory  in  any 
lawful  way,  against  the  wish  of  any  citizen  of  the 
United  States,  exclude  slavery  from  its  limits  prior  to 
the  formation  of  a  State  constitution?" 

Mr.  Lincoln  had  long  and  carefully  studied  the  im 
port  and  effect  of  this  interrogatory,  and  nearly  a 
month  before,  in  a  private  letter,  accurately  foreshad 
owed  Douglas's  course  upon  it : 

"You  shall  have  hard  work,"  he  wrote,  "to  get  him 
directly  to  the  point  whether  a  territorial  legislature 
has  or  has  not  the  power  to  exclude  slavery.  But  if 
you  succeed  in  bringing  him  to  it — though  he  will  be 
compelled  to  say  it  possesses  no  such  power — he  will 
instantly  take  ground  that  slavery  cannot  actually  exist 


THE  FREEPORT  DOCTRINE  123 

in  the  Territories  unless  the  people  desire  it  and  so 
give  it  protection  by  territorial  legislation.  If  this 
offends  the  South,  he  will  let  it  offend  them,  as  at  all 
events  he  means  to  hold  on  to  his  chances  in  Illinois." 

On  the  night  before  the  Freeport  debate  the  ques 
tion  had  also  been  considered  in  a  hurried  caucus  of 
Lincoln's  party  friends.  They  all  advised  against  pro 
pounding  it,  saying,  "If  you  do,  you  can  never  be  sen 
ator."  "Gentlemen,"  replied  Lincoln,  "I  am  killing 
larger  game;  if  Douglas  answers,  he  can  never  be 
President,  and  the  battle  of  1860  is  worth  a  hundred 
of  this." 

As  Lincoln  had  predicted,  Douglas  had  no  resource 
but  to  repeat  the  sophism  he  had  hastily  invented  in 
his  Springfield  speech  of  the  previous  year. 

"It  matters  not,"  replied  he,  "what  way  the  Supreme 
Court  may  hereafter  decide  as  to  the  abstract  ques 
tion  whether  slavery  may  or  may  not  go  into  a  Terri 
tory  under  the  Constitution,  the  people  have  the  lawful 
means  to  introduce  it  or  exclude  it,  as  they  please,  for 
the  reason  that  slavery  cannot  exist  a  day  or  an  hour 
anywhere  unless  it  is  supported  by  local  police  regula- 
lations.  Those  police  regulations  can  only  be  estab 
lished  by  the  local  legislature,  and  if  the  people  are 
opposed  to  slavery  they  will  elect  representatives  to 
that  body  who  will  by  unfriendly  legislation  effectually 
prevent  the  introduction  of  it  into  their  midst.  If,  on 
the  contrary,  they  are  for  it,  their  legislation  will 
favor  its  extension.  Hence,  no  matter  what  the  de 
cision  of  the  Supreme  Court  may  be  on  that  abstract 
question,  still  the  right  of  the  people  to  make  a  slave 
Territory  or  a  free  Territory  is  perfect  and  complete 
under  the  Nebraska  Bill." 

In  the  course  of  the  next  joint  debate  at  Jonesboro', 
Mr.  Lincoln  easily  disposed  of  this  sophism  by  show- 


124  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

ing:  i.  That,  practically,  slavery  had  worked  its  way 
into  Territories  without  "police  regulations"  in  al 
most  every  instance;  2.  That  United  States  courts 
were  established  to  protect  and  enforce  rights  under 
the  Constitution;  3.  That  members  of  a  territorial 
legislature  could  not  violate  their  oath  to  support  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States;  and,  4.  That  in 
default  of  legislative  support,  Congress  would  be 
bound  to  supply  it  for  any  right  under  the  Constitution. 

The  serious  aspect  of  the  matter,  however,  to  Doug 
las  was  not  the  criticism  of  the  Republicans,  but  the 
view  taken  by  Southern  Democratic  leaders,  of  his 
"Freeport  doctrine,"  or  doctrine  of  "unfriendly  legis 
lation."  His  opposition  to  the  Lecompton  Constitution 
in  the  Senate,  grievous  stumbling-block  to  their 
schemes  as  it  had  proved,  might  yet  be  passed  over  as 
a  reckless  breach  of  party  discipline;  but  this  new  an 
nouncement  at  Freeport  was  unpardonable  doctrinal 
heresy,  as  rank  as  the  abolitionism  of  Giddings  and 
Love  joy. 

The  Freeport  joint  debate  took  place  August  27, 
1858.  When  Congress  convened  on  the  first  Monday 
in  December  of  the  same  year,  one  of  the  first  acts  of 
the  Democratic  senators  was  to  put  him  under  party 
ban  by  removing  him  from  the  chairmanship  of  the 
Committee  on  Territories,  a  position  he  had  held  for 
eleven  years.  In  due  time,  also,  the  Southern  leaders 
broke  up  the  Charleston  convention  rather  than  permit 
him  to  be  nominated  for  President ;  and,  three  weeks 
later,  Senator  Benjamin  of  Louisiana  frankly  set 
forth,  in  a  Senate  speech,  the  light  in  which  they 
viewed  his  apostacy : 

"We  accuse  him  for  this,  to  wit:  that  having  bar 
gained  with  us  upon  a  point  upon  which  we  were  at 
issue,  that  it  should  be  considered  a  judicial  point;  that 


LINCOLN'S  DEFEAT  125 

he  would  abide  the  decision;  that  he  would  act  under 
the  decision,  and  consider  it  a  doctrine  of  the  party; 
that  having  said  that  to  us  here  in  the  Senate,  he  went 
home,  and,  under  the  stress  of  a  local  election,  his  knees 
gave  way;  his  whole  person  trembled.  His  adversary 
stood  upon  principle  and  was  beaten ;  and,  lo !  he  is  the 
candidate  of  a  mighty  party  for  the  presidency  of  the 
United  States.  The  senator  from  Illinois  faltered. 
He  got  the  prize  for  which  he  faltered ;  but,  lo !  the 
grand  prize  of  his  ambition  to-day  slips  from  his  grasp, 
because  of  his  faltering  in  his  former  contest,  and  his 
success  in  the  canvass  for  the  Senate,  purchased  for 
an  ignoble  price,  has  cost  him  the  loss  of  the  presi 
dency  of  the  United  States." 

In  addition  to  the  seven  joint  debates,  both  Lincoln 
and  Douglas  made  speeches  at  separate  meetings  of 
their  own  during  almost  every  day  of  the  three  months' 
campaign,  and  sometimes  two  or  three  speeches  a  day. 
At  the  election  which  was  held  on  November  2,  1858, 
a  legislature  was  chosen  containing  fifty-four  Demo 
crats  and  forty-six  Republicans,  notwithstanding  the 
fact  that  the  Republicans  had  a  plurality  of  thirty- 
eight  hundred  and  twenty-one  on  the  popular  vote. 
But  the  apportionment  was  based  on  the  census  of 
1850,  and  did  not  reflect  recent  changes  in  political 
sentiment,  which,  if  fairly  represented,  would  have 
given  them  an  increased  strength  of  from  six  to  ten 
members  in  the  legislature.  Another  circumstance  had 
great  influence  in  causing  Lincoln's  defeat.  Douglas's 
opposition  to  the  Lecompton  Constitution  in  Congress 
had  won  him  great  sympathy  among  a  few  Republican 
leaders  in  the  Eastern  States.  It  was  even  whispered 
that  Seward  wished  Douglas  to  succeed  as  a  strong 
rebuke  to  the  Buchanan  administration.  The  most 
potent  expression  and  influence  of  this  feeling  came, 


126  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

however,  from  another  quarter.  Senator  Crittenden 
of  Kentucky,  who,  since  Clay's  death  in  1852,  was  the 
acknowledged  leader  of  what  remained  of  the  Whig 
party,  wrote  a  letter  during  the  campaign,  openly  ad 
vocating  the  reelection  of  Douglas,  and  this,  doubtless, 
influenced  the  vote  of  all  the  Illinois  Whigs  who  had 
not  yet  formally  joined  the  Republican  party.  Lin 
coln's  own  analysis  gives,  perhaps,  the  clearest  view 
of  the  unusual  political  conditions : 

"Douglas  had  three  or  four  very  distinguished  men 
of  the  most  extreme  antislavery  views  of  any  men  in 
the  Republican  party  expressing  their  desire  for  his 
reelection  to  the  Senate  last  year.  That  would  of  itself 
have  seemed  to  be  a  little  wonderful,  but  that  wonder 
is  heightened  when  we  see  that  Wise  of  Virginia,  a 
man  exactly  opposed  to  them,  a  man  who  believes  in 
the  divine  right  of  slavery,  was  also  expressing  his 
desire  that  Douglas  should  be  reflected;  that  another 
man  that  may  be  said  to  be  kindred  to  Wise,  Mr. 
Breckinridge,  the  Vice-President,  and  of  your  own 
State,  was  also  agreeing  with  the  antislavery  men  in 
the  North  that  Douglas  ought  to  be  reflected.  Still  to 
heighten  the  wonder,  a  senator  from  Kentucky,  whom 
I  have  always  loved  with  an  affection  as  tender  and 
endearing  as  I  have  ever  loved  any  man,  who  was 
opposed  +o  the  antislavery  men  for  reasons  which 
seemed  sufficient  to  him,  and  equally  opposed  to  Wise 
and  Breckinridge,  was  writing  letters  to  Illinois  to 
secure  the  reelection  of  Douglas.  Now  that  all  these 
conflicting  elements  should  be  brought,  while  at  dag 
gers'  points  with  one  another,  to  support  him,  is  a  feat 
that  is  worthy  for  you  to  note  and  consider.  It  is 
quite  probable  that  each  of  these  classes  of  men 
thought  by  the  reelection  of  Douglas  their  peculiar 
views  would  gain  something;  it  is  probable  that  the 


"THE  FIGHT  MUST  GO  ON"  127 

antislavery  men  thought  their  views  would  gain  some 
thing;  that  Wise  and  Breckinridge  thought  so  too,  as 
regards  their  opinions;  that  Mr.  Crittenden  thought 
that  his  views  would  gain  something,  although  he  was 
opposed  to  both  these  other  men.  It  is  probable  that 
each  and  all  of  them  thought  they  were  using  Douglas, 
and  it  is  yet  an  unsolved  problem  whether  he  was  not 
using  them  all." 

Lincoln,  though  beaten  in  his  race  for  the  Senate, 
was  by  no  means  dismayed,  nor  did  he  lose  his  faith 
in  the  ultimate  triumph  of  the  cause  he  had  so  ably 
championed.  Writing  to  a  friend,  he  said : 

"You  doubtless  have  seen  ere  this  the  result  of  the 
election  here.  Of  course  I  wished,  but  I  did  not  much 
expect  a  better  result.  ...  I  am  glad  I  made  the  late 
race.  It  gave  me  a  hearing  on  the  great  and  durable 
question  of  the  age,  which  I  could  have  had  in  no  other 
way;  and  though  I  now  sink  out  of  view,  and  shall  be 
forgotten,  I  believe  I  have  made  some  marks  which 
will  tell  for  the  cause  of  civil  liberty  long  after  I  am 
gone." 

And  to  another : 

"Yours  of  the  I3th  was  received  some  days  ago. 
The  fight  must  go  on.  The  cause  of  civil  liberty  must 
not  be  surrendered  at  the  end  of  one  or  even  one  hun 
dred  defeats.  Douglas  had  the  ingenuity  to  be  sup 
ported  in  the  late  contest,  both  as  the  best  means  to 
break  down  and  to  uphold  the  slave  interest.  No  in 
genuity  can  keep  these  antagonistic  elements  in  har 
mony  long.  Another  explosion  will  soon  come." 

In  his  "House  divided  against  itself"  speech,  Lin 
coln  had  emphatically  cautioned  Republicans  not  to  be 
led  on  a  false  trail  by  the  opposition  Douglas  had  made 
to  the  Lecompton  Constitution;  that  his  temporary 
quarrel  with  the  Buchanan  administration  could  not 


128  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

be  relied  upon  to  help  overthrow  that  pro-slavery 
dynasty. 

"How  can  he  oppose  the  advances  of  slavery?  He 
don't  care  anything  about  it.  His  avowed  mission  is 
impressing  the  'public  heart'  to  care  nothing  about  it. 
Whenever,  if  ever,  he  and  we  can  come  to 
gether  on  principle  so  that  our  great  cause  may  have 
assistance  from  his  great  ability,  I  hope  to  have  inter 
posed  no  adventitious  obstacle.  But,  clearly,  he  is  not 
now  with  us — he  does  not  pretend  to  be — he  does  not 
promise  ever  to  be.  Our  cause,  then,  must  be  in 
trusted  to,  and  conducted  by,  its  own  undoubted 
friends — those  whose  hands  are  free,  whose  hearts  are 
in  the  work,  who  do  care  for  the  result." 

Since  the  result  of  the  Illinois  senatorial  campaign 
had  assured  the  reelection  of  Douglas  to  the  Senate, 
Lincoln's  sage  advice  acquired  a  double  significance 
and  value.  Almost  immediately  after  the  close  of  the 
campaign  Douglas  took  a  trip  through  the  Southern 
States,  and  in  speeches  made  by  him  at  Memphis,  at 
New  Orleans,  and  at  Baltimore  sought  to  regain  the 
confidence  of  Southern  politicians  by  taking  decidedly 
advanced  ground  toward  Southern  views  on  the  sla 
very  question.  On  the  sugar  plantations  of  Louisi 
ana,  he  said,  it  was  not  a  question  between  the  white 
man  and  the  negro,  but  between  the  negro  and  the 
crocodile.  He  would  say  that  between  the  negro  and 
the  crocodile,  he  took  the  side  of  the  negro;  but  be 
tween  the  negro  and  the  white  man,  he  would  go  for 
the  white  man.  The  Almighty  had  drawn  a  line  on 
this  continent,  on  the  one  side  of  which  the  soil  must 
be  cultivated  by  slave  labor;  on  the  other,  by  white 
labor.  That  line  did  not  run  on  36°  and  30'  [the  Mis 
souri  Compromise  line],  for  36°  and  30'  runs  over 
mountains  and  through  valleys.  But  this  slave  line,  he 


SENATOR   BROWN'S   QUESTIONS     129 

said,  meanders  in  the  sugar-fields  and  plantations  of 
the  South,  and  the  people  living  in  their  different 
localities  and  in  the  Territories  must  determine  for 
themselves  whether  their  "middle  belt"  were  best 
adapted  to  slavery  or  free  labor.  He  advocated  the 
eventual  annexation  of  Cuba  and  Central  America. 
Still  going  a  step  further,  he  laid  down  a  far-reaching 
principle. 

"It  is  a  law  of  humanity,"  he  said,  "a  law  of  civil 
ization,  that  whenever  a  man  or  a  race  of  men  show 
themselves  incapable  of  managing  their  own  affairs, 
they  must  consent  to  be  governed  by  those  who  are  ca 
pable  of  performing  the  duty.  ...  In  accordance 
with  this  principle,  I  assert  that  the  negro  race,  under 
all  circumstances,  at  all  times,  and  in  all  countries,  has 
shown  itself  incapable  of  self-government." 

This  pro-slavery  coquetting,  however,  availed  him 
nothing,  as  he  felt  himself  obliged  in  the  same  speeches 
to  defend  his  Freeport  doctrine.  Having  taken  his  seat 
in  Congress,  Senator  Brown  of  Mississippi,  toward 
the  close  of  the  short  session,  catechized  him  sharply 
on  this  point. 

"If  the  territorial  legislature  refuses  to  act,"  he  in 
quired,  "will  you  act?  If  it  pass  unfriendly  acts,  will 
you  pass  friendly?  If  it  pass  laws  hostile  to  slavery, 
will  you  annul  them,  and  substitute  laws  favoring 
slavery  in  their  stead?" 

There  was  no  evading  these  direct  questions,  and 
Douglas  answered  frankly : 

"I  tell  you,  gentlemen  of  the  South,  in  all  candor,  I 
do  not  believe  a  Democratic  candidate  can  ever  carry 
any  one  Democratic  State  of  the  North  on  the  platform 
that  it  is  the  duty  of  the  Federal  government  to  force 
the  people  of  a  Territory  to  have  slavery  when  they 
do  not  want  it." 


130  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

An  extended  discussion  between  Northern  and 
Southern  Democratic  senators  followed  the  colloquy, 
which  showed  that  the  Freeport  doctrine  had  opened 
up  an  irreparable  schism  between  the  Northern  and 
Southern  wings  of  the  Democratic  party. 

In  all  the  speeches  made  by  Douglas  during  his 
Southern  tour,  he  continually  referred  to  Mr.  Lincoln 
as  the  champion  of  abolitionism,  and  to  his  doctrines  as 
the  platform  of  the  abolition  or  Republican  party.  The 
practical  effect  of  this  course  was  to  extend  and  pro 
long  the  Illinois  senatorial  campaign  of  1858,  to  ex 
pand  it  to  national  breadth,  and  gradually  to  merge 
it  in  the  coming  presidential  campaign.  The  effect 
of  this  was  not  only  to  keep  before  the  public  the  posi 
tion  of  Lincoln  as  the  Republican  champion  of  Illinois, 
but  also  gradually  to  lift  him  into  general  recognition 
as  a  national  leader.  Throughout  the  year  1859  poli 
ticians  and  newspapers  came  to  look  upon  Lincoln  as 
the  one  antagonist  who  could  at  all  times  be  relied  on 
to  answer  and  refute  the  Douglas  arguments.  His 
propositions  were  so  forcible  and  direct,  his  phrase 
ology  so  apt  and  fresh,  that  they  held  the  attention  and 
excited  comment.  A  letter  written  by  him  in  answer 
to  an  invitation  to  attend  a  celebration  of  Jefferson's 
birthday  in  Boston,  contains  some  notable  passages : 

"Soberly,  it  is  now  no  child's  play  to  save  the  prin 
ciples  of  Jefferson  from  total  overthrow  in  this  nation. 
One  would  state  with  great  confidence  that  he  could 
convince  any  sane  child  that  the  simpler  propositions 
of  Euclid  are  true;  but,  nevertheless,  he  would  fail, 
utterly,  with  one  who  should  deny  the  definitions  and 
axioms.  The  principles  of  Jefferson  are  the  definitions 
and  axioms  of  free  society.  And  yet  they  are  denied 
and  evaded  with  no  small  show  of  success.  One  dash 
ingly  calls  them  'glittering  generalities.'  Another 


LINCOLN'S   WARNING  131 

bluntly  calls  them  'self-evident  lies.'  And  others  in 
sidiously  argue  that  they  apply  to  'superior  races.' 
These  expressions,  differing  in  form,  are  identical  in 
object  and  effect — the  supplanting  the  principles  of 
free  government,  and  restoring  those  of  classification, 
caste,  and  legitimacy.  They  would  delight  a  convo 
cation  of  crowned  heads  plotting  against  the  people. 
They  are  the  vanguard,  the  miners  and  sappers  of  re 
turning  despotism.  We  must  repulse  them,  or  they 
will  subjugate  us.  This  is  a  world  of  compensation; 
and  he  who  would  be  no  slave  must  consent  to  have  no 
slave.  Those  who  deny  freedom  to  others  deserve  it 
not  for  themselves,  and,  under  a  just  God,  cannot  long 
retain  it." 

Douglas's  quarrel  with  the  Buchanan  administra 
tion  had  led  many  Republicans  to  hope  that  they  might 
be  able  to  utilize  his  name  and  his  theory  of  popular 
sovereignty  to  aid  them  in  their  local  campaigns.  Lin 
coln  knew  from  his  recent  experience  the  peril  of 
this  delusive  party  strategy,  and  was  constant  and  ear 
nest  in  his  warnings  against  adopting  it.  In  a  little 
speech  after  the  Chicago  municipal  election  on  March 
i,  1859,  he  said: 

"If  we,  the  Republicans  of  this  State,  had  made 
Judge  Douglas  our  candidate  for  the  Senate  of  the 
United  States  last  year,  and  had  elected  him,  there 
would  to-day  be  no  Republican  party  in  this  Union. 
.  Let  the  Republican  party  of  Illinois  dally  with 
Judge  Douglas,  let  them  fall  in  behind  him  and  make 
him  their  candidate,  and  they  do  not  absorb  him — he 
absorbs  them.  They  would  come  out  at  the  end  all 
Douglas  men,  all  claimed  by  him  as  having  indorsed 
every  one  of  his  doctrines  upon  the  great  subject  with 
which  the  whole  nation  is  engaged  at  this  hour — that 
the  question  of  negro  slavery  is  simply  a  question  of 


132  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

dollars  and  cents;  that  the  Almighty  has  drawn  a  line 
across  the  continent,  on  one  side  of  which  labor — the 
cultivation  of  the  soil — must  always  be  performed  by 
slaves.  It  would  be  claimed  that  \ve,  like  him,  do  not 
care  whether  slavery  is  voted  up  or  voted  down.  Had 
we  made  him  our  candidate  and  given  him  a  great 
majority,  we  should  never  have  heard  an  end  of  decla 
rations  by  him  that  we  had  indorsed  all  these  dogmas." 

To  a  Kansas  friend  he  wrote  on  May  14,  1859: 

"You  will  probably  adopt  resolutions  in  the  nature 
of  a  platform.  I  think  the  only  temptation  will  be  to 
lower  the  Republican  standard  in  order  to  gather  re 
cruits.  In  my  judgment,  such  a  step  would  be  a 
serious  mistake,  and  open  a  gap  through  which  more 
would  pass  out  than  pass  in.  And  this  would  be  the 
same  whether  the  letting  down  should  be  in  deference 
to  Douglasism,  or  to  the  Southern  opposition  element ; 
either  would  surrender  the  object  of  the  Republican 
organization — the  preventing  of  the  spread  and  nation 
alization  of  slavery.  .  .  .  Let  a  union  be  at 
tempted  on  the  basis  of  ignoring  the  slavery  question, 
and  magnifying  other  questions  which  the  people  are 
just  now  not  caring  about,  and  it  will  result  in  gain 
ing  no  single  electoral  vote  in  the  South,  and  losing 
every  one  in  the  North." 

To  Schuyler  Colfax  (afterward  Vice-President)  he 
said  in  a  letter  dated  July  6,  1859: 

"My  main  object  in  such  conversation  would  be  to 
hedge  against  divisions  in  the  Republican  ranks  gen 
erally,  and  particularly  for  the  contest  of  1860.  The 
point  of  danger  is  the  temptation  in  different  localities 
to  'platform'  for  something  which  will  be  popular  just 
there,  but  which,  nevertheless,  will  be  a  firebrand  else 
where,  and  especially  in  a  national  convention.  As 
instances :  the  movement  against  foreigners  in  Massa- 


LINCOLN'S   WARNING  133 

chusetts ;  in  New  Hampshire,  to  make  obedience  to  the 
fugitive-slave  law  punishable  as  a  crime;  in  Ohio,  to 
repeal  the  fugitive-slave  law ;  and  squatter  sovereignty, 
in  Kansas.  In  these  things  there  is  explosive  matter 
enough  to  blow  up  half  a  dozen  national  conventions, 
if  it  gets  into  them ;  and  what  gets  very  rife  outside  of 
conventions  is  very  likely  to  find  its  way  into  them." 

And  again,  to  another  warm  friend  in  Columbus, 
Ohio,  he  wrote  in  a  letter  dated  July  28,  1859 : 

"There  is  another  thing  our  friends  are  doing  which 
gives  me  some  uneasiness.  It  is  their  leaning  toward 
'popular  sovereignty.'  There  are  three  substantial  ob 
jections  to  this.  First,  no  party  can  command  respect 
which  sustains  this  year  what  it  opposed  last.  Sec 
ondly,  Douglas  (who  is  the  most  dangerous  enemy 
of  liberty,  because  the  most  insidious  one)  would  have 
little  support  in  the  North,  and,  by  consequence,  no 
capital  to  trade  on  in  the  South,  if  it  were  not  for  his 
friends  thus  magnifying  him  and  his  humbug.  But 
lastly,  and  chiefly,  Douglas's  popular  sovereignty,  ac 
cepted  by  the  public  mind  as  a  just  principle,  national 
izes  slavery,  and  revives  the  African  slave-trade  inev 
itably.  Taking  slaves  into  new  Territories,  and  buying 
slaves  in  Africa,  are  identical  things,  identical  rights 
or  identical  wrongs,  and  the  argument  which  estab 
lishes  one  will  establish  the  other.  Try  a  thousand 
years  for  a  sound  reason  why  Congress  shall  not  hin 
der  the  people  of  Kansas  from  having  slaves,  and  when 
you  have  found  it,  it  will  be  an  equally  good  one  why 
Congress  should  not  hinder  the  people  of  Georgia  from 
importing  slaves  from  Africa." 

An  important  election  occurred  in  the  State  of  Ohio 
in  the  autumn  of  1859,  and  during  the  canvass  Douglas 
made  twro  speeches  in  which,  as  usual,  his  pointed  at 
tacks  were  directed  against  Lincoln  by  name.  Quite 


134  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

naturally,  the  Ohio  Republicans  called  Lincoln  to 
answer  him,  and  the  marked  impression  created  by 
Lincoln's  replies  showed  itself  not  alone  in  their  un 
precedented  circulation  in  print  in  newspapers  and 
pamphlets,  but  also  in  the  decided  success  which  the 
Ohio  Republicans  gained  at  the  polls.  About  the  same 
time,  also,  Douglas  printed  a  long  political  essay  in 
"Harper's  Magazine,"  using  as  a  text  quotations  from 
Lincoln's  "House  divided  against  itself"  speech,  and 
Seward's  Rochester  speech  defining  the  "irrepressible 
conflict."  Attorney-General  Black  of  President  Bu 
chanan's  cabinet  here  entered  the  lists  with  an  anony 
mously  printed  pamphlet  in  pungent  criticism  of 
Douglas's  "Harper"  essay;  which  again  was  followed 
by  reply  and  rejoinder  on  both  sides. 

Into  this  field  of  overheated  political  controversy 
the  news  of  the  John  Brown  raid  at  Harper's  Ferry 
on  Sunday,  October  19,  fell  with  startling  portent. 
The  scattering  and  tragic  fighting  in  the  streets  of  the 
little  town  on  Monday;  the  dramatic  capture  of  the 
fanatical  leader  on  Tuesday  by  a  detachment  of  Fed 
eral  marines  under  the  command  of  Robert  E.  Lee,  the 
famous  Confederate  general  of  subsequent  years;  the 
undignified  haste  of  his  trial  and  condemnation  by  the 
Virginia  authorities ;  the  interviews  of  Governor  Wise, 
Senator  Mason,  and  Representative  Vallandigham 
with  the  prisoner;  his  sentence,  and  execution  on  the 
gallows  on  December  2 ;  and  the  hysterical  laudations 
of  his  acts  by  a  few  prominent  and  extreme  abolition 
ists  in  the  East,  kept  public  opinion,  both  North  and 
South,  in  an  inflamed  and  feverish  state  for  nearly  six 
weeks. 

Mr.  Lincoln's  habitual  freedom  from  passion,  and 
the  steady  and  common-sense  judgment  he  applied  to 
this  exciting  event,  which  threw  almost  everybody  into 


JOHN  BROWN  135 

an  extreme  of  feeling  or  utterance,  are  well  illustrated 
by  the  temperate  criticism  he  made  of  it  a  few  months 
later : 

"John  Brown's  effort  was  peculiar.  It  was  not  a 
slave  insurrection.  It  was  an  attempt  by  white  men 
to  get  up  a  revolt  among  slaves,  in  which  the  slaves 
refused  to  participate.  In  fact,  it  was  so  absurd  that 
the  slaves,  with  all  their  ignorance,  saw  plainly  enough 
it  could  not  succeed.  That  affair,  in  its  philosophy, 
corresponds  with  the  many  attempts,  related  in  history, 
at  the  assassination  of  kings  and  emperors.  An  enthu 
siast  broods  over  the  oppression  of  a  people  till  he  fan 
cies  himself  commissioned  by  Heaven  to  liberate  them. 
He  ventures  the  attempt,  which  ends  in  little  else  than 
his  own  execution.  Orsini's  attempt  on  Louis  Napo 
leon  and  John  Brown's  attempt  at  Harper's  Ferry 
were,  in  their  philosophy,  precisely  the  same.  The 
eagerness  to  cast  blame  on  old  England  in  the  one  case, 
and  on  New  England  in  the  other,  does  not  disprove 
the  sameness  of  the  two  things." 


X 

Lincoln's  Kansas  Speeches — The  Cooper  Institute  Speech 
— New  England  Speeches — The  Democratic  Schism — 
Senator  Brown's  Resolutions — Jefferson  Davis's  Reso 
lutions — The  Charleston  Convention — Majority  and 
Minority  Reports — Cotton  State  Delegations  Secede — 
Charleston  Convention  Adjourns — Democratic  Balti 
more  Convention  Splits — Breckinridge  Nominated — 
Douglas  Nominated — Bell  Nominated  by  Union  Con 
stitutional  Convention — Chicago  Convention — Lincoln's 
Letters  to  Pickett  and  Judd — The  Pivotal  States — Lin 
coln  Nominated 

DURING  the  month  of  December,  1859,  Mr.  Lin 
coln  was  invited  to  the  Territory  of  Kansas, 
where  he  made  speeches  at  a  number  of  its  new  and 
growing  towns.  In  these  speeches  he  laid  special  em 
phasis  upon  the  necessity  of  maintaining  undiminished 
the  vigor  of  the  Republican  organization  and  the  high 
plane  of  the  Republican  doctrine. 

"We  want,  and  must  have/'  said  he,  "a  national 
policy  as  to  slavery  which  deals  with  it  as  being  a 
wrong.  Whoever  would  prevent  slavery  becoming 
national  and  perpetual  yields  all  when  he  yields  to  a 
policy  which  treats  it  either  as  being  right,  or  as  being 
a  matter  of  indifference."  "To  effect  our  main  object 
we  have  to  employ  auxiliary  means.  WTe  must  hold 
conventions,  adopt  platforms,  select  candidates,  and 
carry  elections.  At  every  step  we  must  be  true  to  the 
main  purpose.  If  we  adopt  a  platform  falling  short 

136 


COOPER  INSTITUTE  SPEECH          137 

of  our  principle,  or  elect  a  man  rejecting  our  principle, 
we  not  only  take  nothing  affirmative  by  our  success, 
but  we  draw  upon  us  the  positive  embarrassment  of 
seeming  ourselves  to  have  abandoned  our  principle." 

A  still  more  important  service,  however,  in  giving 
the  Republican  presidential  campaign  of  1860  precise 
form  and  issue  was  rendered  by  him  during  the  first 
three  months  of  the  new  year.  The  public  mind  had 
become  so  preoccupied  with  the  dominant  subject  of 
national  politics,  that  a  committee  of  enthusiastic 
young  Republicans  of  New  York  and  Brooklyn  ar 
ranged  a  course  of  public  lectures  by  prominent  states 
men,  and  Mr.  Lincoln  was  invited  to  deliver  the  third 
one  of  the  series.  The  meeting  took  place  in  the  hall  of 
the  Cooper  Institute  in  New  York,  on  the  evening  of 
February  27,  1860;  and  the  audience  was  made  up  of 
ladies  and  gentlemen  comprising  the  leading  represen 
tatives  of  the  wealth,  culture,  and  influence  of  the  great 
metropolis. 

Mr.  Lincoln's  name  and  arguments  had  filled  so 
large  a  space  in  Eastern  newspapers,  both  friendly  and 
hostile,  that  the  listeners  before  him  were  intensely 
curious  to  see  and  hear  this  rising  Western  politician. 
The  West  was  even  at  that  late  day  but  imperfectly 
understood  by  the  East.  The  poets  and  editors,  the 
bankers  and  merchants  of  New  York  vaguely  remem 
bered  having  read  in  their  books  that  it  was  the  home 
of  Daniel  Boone  and  Davy  Crockett,  the  country  of 
bowie-knives  and  pistols,  of  steamboat  explosions  and 
mobs,  of  wild  speculation  and  the  repudiation  of  State 
debts;  and  these  half-forgotten  impressions  had  lately 
been  vividly  recalled  by  a  several  years'  succession  of 
newspaper  reports  retailing  the  incidents  of  Border 
Ruffian  violence  and  free-State  guerrilla  reprisals  dur 
ing  the  civil  war  in  Kansas.  What  was  to  be  the  type, 


138  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

the  character,  the  language  of  this  speaker?  How 
would  he  impress  the  great  editor  Horace  Greeley,  who 
sat  among  the  invited  guests ;  David  Dudley  Field,  the 
great  lawyer,  who  escorted  him  to  the  platform;  Wil 
liam  Cullen  Bryant,  the  great  poet,  who  presided  over 
the  meeting? 

Judging  from  after  effects,  the  audience  quickly  for 
got  these  questioning  thoughts.  They  had  but  time 
to  note  Mr.  Lincoln's  impressive  stature,  his  strongly 
marked  features,  the  clear  ring  of  his  rather  high- 
pitched  voice,  and  the  almost  commanding  earnestness 
of  his  manner.  His  beginning  foreshadowed  a  dry  ar 
gument,  using  as  a  text  Douglas's  phrase  that  "our 
fathers,  when  they  framed  the  government  under 
which  we  live,  understood  this  question  just  as  well 
and  even  better  than  we  do  now."  But  the  concise 
statements,  the  strong  links  of  reasoning,  and  the  ir 
resistible  conclusions  of  the  argument  with  which  the 
speaker  followed  his  close  historical  analysis  of  how 
"our  fathers"  understood  "this  question,"  held  every 
listener  as  though  each  were  individually  merged  in 
the  speaker's  thought  and  demonstration. 

"It  is  surely  safe  to  assume,"  said  he,  with  emphasis, 
"that  the  thirty-nine  framers  of  the  original  Constitu 
tion  and  the  seventy-six  members  of  the  Congress 
which  framed  the  amendments  thereto,  taken  together, 
do  certainly  include  those  who  may  be  fairly  called 
'our  fathers  who  framed  the  government  under  which 
we  live.'  And,  so  assuming,  I  defy  any  man  to  show 
that  any  one  of  them  ever,  in  his  whole  life,  declared 
that,  in  his  understanding,  any  proper  division  of  local 
from  Federal  authority,  or  any  part  of  the  Constitu 
tion,  forbade  the  Federal  government  to  control  as  to 
slavery  in  the  Federal  Territories." 

With  equal  skill  he  next  dissected  the  complaints, 


COOPER  INSTITUTE  SPEECH          139 

the  demands,  and  the  threats  to  dissolve  the  Union 
made  by  the  Southern  States,  pointed  out  their  empti 
ness,  their  fallacy,  and  their  injustice,  and  defined  the 
exact  point  and  center  of  the  agitation. 

"Holding,  as  they  do,"  said  he,  "that  slavery  is  mor 
ally  right  and  socially  elevating,  they  cannot  cease  to 
demand  a  full  national  recognition  of  it,  as  a  legal 
right  and  a  social  blessing.  Nor  can  we  justifiably 
withhold  this  on  any  ground,  save  our  conviction  that 
slavery  is  wrong.  If  slavery  is  right,  all  words,  acts, 
laws,  and  constitutions  against  it  are  themselves  wrong, 
and  should  be  silenced  and  swept  away.  If  it  is  right, 
we  cannot  justly  object  to  its  nationality — its  univer 
sality!  If  it  is  wrong,  they  cannot  justly  insist  upon 
its  extension — its  enlargement.  All  they  ask  we  could 
readily  grant,  if  we  thought  slavery  right;  all  we  ask 
they  could  as  readily  grant,  if  they  thought  it  wrong. 
Their  thinking  it  right,  and  our  thinking  it  wrong, 
is  the  precise  fact  upon  which  depends  the  whole  con 
troversy.  .  .  .  Wrong  as  we  think  slavery  is 
we  can  yet  afford  to  let  it  alone  where  it  is,  because 
that  much  is  due  to  the  necessity  arising  from  its 
actual  presence  in  the  nation;  but  can  we,  while  our 
votes  will  prevent  it,  allow  it  to  spread  into  the  na 
tional  Territories,  and  to  overrun  us  here  in  the  free 
States?  If  our  sense  of  duty  forbids  this,  then  let 
us  stand  by  our  duty,  fearlessly  and  effectively.  Let 
us  be  diverted  by  none  of  those  sophistical  contrivances 
wherewith  we  are  so  industriously  plied  and  bela 
bored,  contrivances  such  as  groping  for  some  middle 
ground  between  the  right  and  the  wrong,  vain  as  the 
search  for  a  man  who  should  be  neither  a  living  man 
nor  a  dead  man;  such  as  a  policy  of  'don't  care,'  on  a 
question  about  which  all  true  men  do  care;  such  as 
Union  appeals  beseeching  true  Union  men  to  yield  to 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

disunionists ;  reversing  the  divine  rule,  and  calling,  not 
the  sinners,  but  the  righteous  to  repentance;  such  as 
invocations  to  Washington,  imploring  men  to  unsay 
what  Washington  said,  and  undo  what  Washington 
did.  Neither  let  us  be  slandered  from  our  duty  by  false 
accusations  against  us,  nor  frightened  from  it  by  men 
aces  of  destruction  to  the  government  nor  of  dungeons 
to  ourselves.  Let  us  have  faith  that  right  makes  might, 
and  in  that  faith  let  us,  to  the  end,  dare  to  do  our  duty 
as  we  understand  it." 

The  close  attention  bestowed  on  its  delivery,  the 
hearty  applause  that  greeted  its  telling  points,  and  the 
enthusiastic  comments  of  the  Republican  journals  next 
morning  showed  that  Lincoln's  Cooper  Institute  speech 
had  taken  New  York  by  storm.  It  was  printed  in  full 
in  four  of  the  leading  New  York  dailies,  and  at  once 
went  into  large  circulation  in  carefully  edited  pamphlet 
editions.  From  New  York,  Lincoln  made  a  tour  of 
speech-making  through  several  of  the  New  England 
States,  and  was  everywhere  received  with  enthusiastic 
welcome  and  listened  to  with  an  eagerness  that  bore  a 
marked  result  in  their  spring  elections.  The  interest 
of  the  factory  men  who  listened  to  these  addresses  was 
equaled,  perhaps  excelled,  by  the  gratified  surprise  of 
college  professors  when  they  heard  the  style  and 
method  of  a  popular  Western  orator  that  would  bear 
the  test  of  their  professional  criticism  and  compare 
with  the  best  examples  in  their  standard  text-books. 

The  attitude  of  the  Democratic  party  in  the  coming 
presidential  campaign  wTas  now  also  rapidly  taking 
shape.  Great  curiosity  existed  whether  the  radical  dif 
ferences  between  its  Northern  and  Southern  wings  could 
by  any  possibility  be  removed  or  adjusted,  whether  the 
adherents  of  Douglas  and  those  of  Buchanan  could  be 
brought  to  join  in  a  common  platform  and  in  the  sup- 


DEMOCRATIC   DIFFERENCES          141 

port  of  a  single  candidate.  The  Democratic  leaders  in 
the  Southern  States  had  become  more  and  more  out 
spoken  in  their  pro-slavery  demands.  They  had  ad 
vanced  step  by  step  from  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri 
Compromise  in  1854,  the  attempt  to  capture  Kansas 
by  Missouri  invasions  in  1855  and  1856,  the  support 
of  the  Dred  Scott  decision  and  the  Lecompton  fraud  in 

1857,  the  repudiation  of  Douglas's  Freeport  heresy  in 

1858,  to  the  demand  for  a  congressional  slave  code  for 
the  Territories  and  the  recognition  of  the  doctrine  of 
property  in  slaves.    These  last  two  points  they  had  dis 
tinctly  formulated  in  the  first  session  of  the  Thirty- 
sixth  Congress.     On  January  18,  1860,  Senator  Brown 
of  Mississippi  introduced  into  the  Senate  two  resolu 
tions,  one  asserting  the  nationality  of  slavery,  the  other 
that,  when  necessary,  Congress  should  pass  laws  for 
its  protection  in  the  Territories.     On  February  2  Jef 
ferson  Davis  introduced  another  series  of  resolutions 
intended  to  serve  as  a  basis  for  the  national  Democratic 
platform,  the  central  points  of  which  were  that  the 
right  to  take  and  hold  slaves  in  the  Territories  could 
neither  be  impaired  nor  annulled,  and  that  it  was  the 
duty  of  Congress  to  supply  any  deficiency  of  laws  for 
its  protection.      Perhaps   even   more   significant   than 
these  formulated  doctrines  was  the  pro-slavery  spirit 
manifested  in  the  congressional  debates.     Two  months 
were  wasted  in  a  parliamentary  struggle  to  prevent  the 
election  of  the  Republican,  John  Sherman,  as  Speaker 
of  the  House  of  Representatives,  because  the  Southern 
members  charged  that  he  had  recommended  an  "abo 
lition"  book;  during  which  time  the  most  sensational 
and  violent  threats  of  disunion  were  made  in  both  the 
House  and  the  Senate,  containing  repeated  declarations 
that  they  would  never  submit  to  the  inauguration  of  a 
"Black  Republican"  President. 


142  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

When  the  national  Democratic  convention  met  at 
Charleston,  on  April  23,  1860,  there  at  once  became 
evident  the  singular  condition  that  the  delegates  from 
the  free  States  were  united  and  enthusiastic  in  their 
determination  to  secure  the  nomination  of  Douglas  as 
the  Democratic  candidate  for  President,  while  the  dele 
gates  from  the  slave  States  were  equally  united  and 
determined  upon  forcing  the  acceptance  of  an  extreme 
pro-slavery  platform.  All  expectations  of  a  compro 
mise,  all  hope  of  coming  to  an  understanding  by  jug 
gling  omissions  or  evasions  in  their  declaration  of 
party  principles  were  quickly  dissipated.  The  platform 
committee,  after  three  days  and  nights  of  fruitless  ef 
fort,  presented  two  antagonistic  reports.  The  major 
ity  report  declared  that  neither  Congress  nor  a  terri 
torial  legislature  could  abolish  or  prohibit  slavery  in  the 
Territories,  and  that  it  was  the  duty  of  the  Federal 
government  to  protect  it  when  necessary.  To  this  doc 
trine  the  Northern  members  could  not  consent;  but 
they  were  willing  to  adopt  the  ambiguous  declaration 
that  property  rights  in  slaves  were  judicial  in  their 
character,  and  that  they  would  abide  the  decisions  of 
the  Supreme  Court  on  such  questions. 

The  usual  expedient  of  recommitting  both  reports 
brought  no  relief  from  the  deadlock.  A  second  ma 
jority  and  a  second  minority  report  exhibited  the  same 
irreconcilable  divergence  in  slightly  different  language, 
and  the  words  of  mutual  defiance  exchanged  in  debat 
ing  the  first  report  rose  to  a  parliamentary  storm  when 
the  second  came  under  discussion.  On  the  seventh  day 
the  convention  came  to  a  vote,  and,  the  Northern  dele 
gates  being  in  the  majority,  the  minority  report  was 
substituted  for  that  of  the  majority  of  the  committee 
by  one  hundred  and  sixty-five  to  one  hundred  and 
thirt}r-eight  delegates — in  other  words,  the  Douglas 


DEMOCRATIC  CONVENTIONS         143 

platform  was  declared  adopted.  Upon  this  the  dele 
gates  of  the  cotton  States — Alabama,  Mississippi, 
Louisiana,  South  Carolina,  Florida,  Texas,  and  Ar 
kansas — withdrew  from  the  convention.  It  soon  ap 
peared,  however,  that  the  Douglas  delegates  had 
achieved  only  a  barren  victory.  Their  majority  could 
indeed  adopt  a  platform,  but,  under  the  acknowledged 
two-thirds  rule  which  governs  Democratic  national 
conventions,  they  had  not  sufficient  votes  to  nominate 
their  candidate.  During  the  fifty-seven  ballots  taken, 
the  Douglas  men  could  muster  only  one  hundred  and 
fifty-two  and  one  half  votes  of  the  two  hundred  and 
two  necessary  to  a  choice;  and  to  prevent  mere  slow 
disintegration  the  convention  adjourned  on  the  tenth 
day,  under  a  resolution  to  reassemble  in  Baltimore  on 
June  1 8. 

Nothing  was  gained,  however,  by  the  delay.  In  the 
interim,  Jefferson  Davis  and  nineteen  other  Southern 
leaders  published  an  address  commending  the  with 
drawal  of  the  cotton  States  delegates,  and  in  a  Senate 
debate  Davis  laid  down  the  plain  proposition,  "We 
want  nothing  more  than  a  simple  declaration  that  negro 
slaves  are  property,  and  we  want  the  recognition  of 
the  obligation  of  the  Federal  government  to  protect 
that  property  like  all  other." 

Upon  the  reassembling  of  the  Charleston  convention 
at  Baltimore,  it  underwent  a  second  disruption  on  the 
fifth  day;  the  Northern  wing  nominated  Stephen  A. 
Douglas  of  Illinois,  and  the  Southern  wing  John  C. 
Breckinridge  of  Kentucky  as  their  respective  candi 
dates  for  President.  In  the  meanwhile,  also,  regular 
and  irregular  delegates  from  some  twenty-two  States, 
representing  fragments  of  the  old  Whig  party,  had  con 
vened  at  Baltimore  on  May  9  and  nominated  John  Bell 
of  Tennessee  as  their  candidate  for  President,  upon 


144  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

a  platform  ignoring  the  slavery  issue  and  declaring 
that  they  would  "recognize  no  other  political  principle 
than  the  Constitution  of  the  country,  the  union  of  the 
States,  and  the  enforcement  of  the  laws." 

In  the  long  contest  between  slavery  extension  and 
slavery  restriction  which  was  now  approaching  its  cul 
mination,  the  growing  demands  and  increasing  bitter 
ness  of  the  pro-slavery  party  had  served  in  an  equal 
degree  to  intensify  the  feelings  and  stimulate  the  ef 
forts  of  the  Republican  party;  and,  remembering  the 
encouraging  opposition  strength  which  the  united  vote 
of  Fremont  and  Fillmore  had  shown  in  1856,  they 
felt  encouraged  to  hope  for  possible  success  in  1860, 
since  the  Fillmore  party  had  practically  disappeared 
throughout  the  free  States.  When,  therefore,  the 
Charleston  convention  was  rent  asunder  and  adjourned 
on  May  10  without  making  a  nomination,  the  possibil 
ity  of  Republican  victory  seemed  to  have  risen  to  proba 
bility.  Such  a  feeling  inspired  the  eager  enthusiasm 
of  the  delegates  to  the  Republican  national  convention 
which  met,  according  to  appointment,  at  Chicago  on 
May  1 6. 

A  large,  temporary  wooden  building,  christened 
"The  Wigwam,"  had  been  erected  in  which  to  hold 
its  sessions,  and  it  was  estimated  that  ten  thousand  per 
sons  were  assembled  in  it  to  witness  the  proceedings. 
William  H.  Seward  of  New  York  was  recognized  as 
the  leading  candidate,  but  Chase  of  Ohio,  Cameron  of 
Pennsylvania,  Bates  of  Missouri,  and  several  promi 
nent  Republicans  from  other  States  were  known  to 
have  active  and  zealous  followers.  The  name  of 
Abraham  Lincoln  had  also  often  been  mentioned  dur 
ing  his  growing  fame,  and,  fully  a  year  before,  an 
ardent  Republican  editor  of  Illinois  had  requested  per 
mission  to  announce  him  in  his  newspaper.  Lincoln, 


LETTERS   TO   PARTY   FRIENDS        145 

however,  discouraged  such  action  at  that  time,  answer 
ing  him : 

"As  to  the  other  matter  you  kindly  mention,  I  must 
in  candor  say  I  do  not  think  myself  fit  for  the  presi 
dency.  I  certainly  am  flattered  and  gratified  that  some 
partial  friends  think  of  me  in  that  connection;  but  I 
really  think  it  best  for  our  cause  that  no  concerted 
effort,  such  as  you  suggest,  should  be  made." 

He  had  given  an  equally  positive  answer  to  an  eager 
Ohio  friend  in  the  preceding  July;  but  about  Christ 
mas,  1859,  an  influential  caucus  of  his  strongest  Illi 
nois  adherents  made  a  personal  request  that  he  would 
permit  them  to  use  his  name,  and  he  gave  his  consent, 
not  so  much  in  any  hope  of  becoming  the  nominee  for 
President,  as  in  possibly  reaching  the  second  place  on 
the  ticket;  or  at  least  of  making  such  a  showing  of 
strength  before  the  convention  as  would  aid  him  in  his 
future  senatorial  ambition  at  home,  or  perhaps  carry 
him  into  the  cabinet  of  the  Republican  President, 
should  one  succeed.  He  had  not  been  eager  to  enter  the 
lists,  but  once  having  agreed  to  do  so,  it  was  but 
natural  that  he  should  manifest  a  becoming  interest, 
subject,  however,  now  as  always,  to  his  inflexible  rule 
of  fair  dealing  and  honorable  faith  to  all  his  party 
friends. 

"I  do  not  understand  Trumbull  and  myself  to  be 
rivals,"  he  wrote  December  9,  1859.  "You  know  I 
am  pledged  not  to  enter  a  struggle  with  him  for  the 
seat  in  the  Senate  now  occupied  by  him;  and  yet  I 
would  rather  have  a  full  term  in  the  Senate  than  in 
the  presidency." 

And  on  February  9  he  wrote  to  the  same  Illinois 
friend : 

"I  am  not  in  a  position  where  it  would  hurt  much  for 
me  not  to  be  nominated  on  the  national  ticket;  but  I 

10 


146  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

am  where  it  would  hurt  some  for  me  not  to  get  the 
Illinois  delegates.  What  I  expected  when  I  wrote  the 
the  letter  to  Messrs.  Dole  and  others  is  now  happening. 
Your  discomfited  assailants  are  most  bitter  against  me ; 
and  they  will,  for  revenge  upon  me,  lay  to  the  Bates 
egg  in  the  South,  and  to  the  Seward  egg  in  the  North, 
and  go  far  toward  squeezing  me  out  in  the  middle 
with  nothing.  Can  you  not  help  me  a  little  in  this 
matter  in  your  end  of  the  vineyard?" 

It  turned  out  that  the  delegates  whom  the  Illinois 
State  convention  sent  to  the  national  convention  at 
Chicago  were  men  not  only  of  exceptional  standing  and 
ability,  but  filled  with  the  warmest  zeal  for  Mr.  Lin 
coln's  success;  and  they  were  able  at  once  to  impress 
upon  delegates  from  other  States  his  sterling  personal 
worth  and  fitness,  and  his  superior  availability.  It 
needed  but  little  political  arithmetic  to  work  out  the 
sum  of  existing  political  chances.  It  was  almost  self- 
evident  that  in  the  coming  November  election  victory 
or  defeat  would  hang  upon  the  result  in  the  four  piv 
otal  States  of  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  Indiana,  and 
Illinois.  It  was  quite  certain  that  no  Republican  can 
didate  could  carry  a  single  one  of  the  fifteen  slave 
States;  and  equally  sure  that  Breckinridge,  on  his  ex 
treme  pro-slavery  platform,  could  not  carry  a  single 
one  of  the  eighteen  free  States.  But  there  was  a 
chance  that  one  or  more  of  these  four  pivotal  free 
States  might  cast  its  vote  for  Douglas  and  popular  sov 
ereignty. 

A  candidate  was  needed,  therefore,  who  could  suc 
cessfully  cope  with  Douglas  and  the  Douglas  theory; 
and  this  ability  had  been  convincingly  demonstrated 
by  Lincoln.  As  a  mere  personal  choice,  a  majority  of 
the  convention  would  have  preferred  Seward;  but  in 
the  four  pivotal  States  there  were  many  voters  who 


CHICAGO  CONVENTION  147 

believed  Seward's  antislavery  views  to  be  too  radical. 
They  shrank  apprehensively  from  the  phrase  in  one  of 
his  speeches  that  "there  is  a  higher  law  than  the  Con 
stitution."  These  pivotal  States  all  lay  adjoining  slave 
States,  and  their  public  opinion  was  infected  with 
something  of  the  undefined  dread  of  "abolitionism." 
When  the  delegates  of  the  pivotal  States  were  inter 
viewed,  they  frankly  confessed  that  they  could  not 
carry  their  States  for  Seward,  and  that  would  mean 
certain  defeat  if  he  were  the  nominee  for  President. 
For  their  voters  Lincoln  stood  on  more  acceptable 
ground.  His  speeches  had  been  more  conservative ;  his 
local  influence  in  his  own  State  of  Illinois  was  also  a 
factor  not  to  be  idly  thrown  away. 

Plain,  practical  reasoning  of  this  character  found 
ready  acceptance  among  the  delegates  to  the  conven 
tion.  Their  eagerness  for  the  success  of  the  cause 
largely  overbalanced  their  personal  preferences  for  fa 
vorite  aspirants.  When  the  convention  met,  the  fresh, 
hearty  hopefulness  of  its  members  was  a  most  inspir 
ing  reflection  of  the  public  opinion  in  the  States  that 
sent  them.  They  went  at  their  work  with  an  earnest 
ness  which  was  an  encouraging  premonition  of  success, 
and  they  felt  a  gratifying  support  in  the  presence  of  the 
ten  thousand  spectators  who  looked  on  at  their  work. 
Few  conventions  have  ever  been  pervaded  by  such  a 
depth  of  feeling,  or  exhibited  such  a  reserve  of  latent 
enthusiasm.  The  cheers  that  greeted  the  entrance  of 
popular  favorites,  and  the  short  speeches  on  prelimi 
nary  business,  ran  and  rolled  through  the  great  audi 
ence  in  successive  moving  waves  of  sound  that  were 
echoed  and  reechoed  from  side  to  side  of  the  vast  build 
ing.  Not  alone  the  delegates  on  the  central  platform, 
but  the  multitude  of  spectators  as  well,  felt  that  they 
were  playing  a  part  in  a  great  historical  event. 


148  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

The  temporary,  and  afterward  the  permanent  or 
ganization,  was  finished  on  the  first  day,  with  somewhat 
less  than  usual  of  the  wordy  and  tantalizing  small  talk 
which  these  routine  proceedings  always  call  forth.  On 
the  second  day  the  platform  committee  submitted  its 
work,  embodying  the  carefully  considered  and  skilfully 
framed  body  of  doctrines  upon  which  the  Republican 
party,  made  up  only  four  years  before  from  such  pre 
viously  heterogeneous  and  antagonistic  political  ele 
ments,  was  now  able  to  find  common  and  durable 
ground  of  agreement.  Around  its  central  tenet,  which 
denied  "the  authority  of  Congress,  of  a  territorial 
legislature,  or  of  any  individuals,  to  give  legal  exis 
tence  to  slavery  in  any  territory  of  the  United  States," 
were  grouped  vigorous  denunciations  of  the  various 
steps  and  incidents  of  the  pro-slavery  reaction,  and  its 
prospective  demands;  while  its  positive  recommenda 
tions  embraced  the  immediate  admission  of  Kansas, 
free  homesteads  to  actual  settlers,  river  and  harbor 
improvements  of  a  national  character,  a  railroad  to  the 
Pacific  Ocean,  and  the  maintenance  of  existing  natural 
ization  laws. 

The  platform  was  about  to  be  adopted  without  ob 
jection,  when  a  flurry  of  discussion  arose  over  an 
amendment,  proposed  by  Mr.  Giddings  of  Ohio,  to  in 
corporate  in  it  that  phrase  of  the  Declaration  of  Inde 
pendence  which  declares  the  right  of  all  men  to  life, 
liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness.  Impatience  was 
at  once  manifested  lest  any  change  should  produce  end 
less  delay  and  dispute.  "I  believe  in  the  Ten  Com 
mandments,"  commented  a  member,  "but  I  do  not 
want  them  in  a  political  platform" ;  and  the  proposition 
was  voted  down.  Upon  this  the  old  antislavery  vet 
eran  felt  himself  agrieved,  and,  taking  up  his  hat, 
marched  out  of  the  convention.  In  the  course  of  an 


CHICAGO  CONVENTION  149 

hour's  desultory  discussion  however,  a  member,  with 
stirring  oratorical  emphasis,  asked  whether  the  conven 
tion  was  prepared  to  go  upon  record  before  the  coun 
try  as  voting  down  the  words  of  the  Declaration  of 
Independence — whether  the  men  of  1860,  on  the  free 
prairies  of  the  West,  quailed  before  repeating  the 
words  enunciated'  by  the  men  of  '76  at  Philadelphia. 
In  an  impulse  of  patriotic  reaction,  the  amendment  was 
incorporated  into  the  platform,  and  Mr.  Giddings  was 
brought  back  by  his  friends,  his  face  beaming  with 
triumph ;  and  the  stormy  acclaim  of  the  audience  mani 
fested  the  deep  feeling  which  the  incident  evoked. 

On  the  third  day  it  was  certain  that  balloting  would 
begin,  and  crowds  hurried  to  the  Wigwam  in  a  fever  of 
curiosity.  Having  grown  restless  at  the  indispensable 
routine  preliminaries,  when  Mr.  Evarts  nominated 
William  H.  Seward  of  New  York  for  President,  they 
greeted  his  name  with  a  perfect  storm  of  applause. 
Then  Mr.  Judd  nominated  Abraham  Lincoln  of  Illi 
nois,  and  in  the  tremendous  cheering  that  broke  from 
the  throats  of  his  admirers  and  followers  the  former 
demonstration  dwindled  to  comparative  feebleness. 
Again  and  again  these  contests  of  lungs  and  enthusi 
asm  were  repeated  as  the  choice  of  New  York  was 
seconded  by  Michigan,  and  that  of  Illinois  by  In 
diana. 

When  other  names  had  been  duly  presented,  the 
cheering  at  length  subsided,  and  the  chairman  an 
nounced  that  balloting  would  begin.  Many  spectators 
had  provided  themselves  with  tally-lists,  and  when  the 
first  roll-call  was  completed  were  able  at  once  to  per 
ceive  the  drift  of  popular  preference.  Cameron,  Chase, 
Bates,  McLean,  Dayton,  and  Collamer  were  indorsed 
by  the  substantial  votes  of  their  own  States;  but  two 
names  stood  out  in  marked  superiority:  Seward,  who 


i5o  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

had  received  one  hundred  and  seventy-three  and  one 
half  votes,  and  Lincoln,  one  hundred  and  two. 

The  New  York  delegation  was  so  thoroughly  per 
suaded  of  the  final  success  of  their  candidate  that  they 
did  not  comprehend  the  significance  of  this  first  ballot. 
Had  they  reflected  that  their  delegation  alone  had  con 
tributed  seventy  votes  to  Seward's  total,  they  would 
have  understood  that  outside  of  the  Empire  State,  upon 
this  first  showing,  Lincoln  held  their  favorite  almost 
an  even  race.  As  the  second  ballot  progressed,  their 
anxiety  visibly  increased.  They  watched  with  eager 
ness  as  the  complimentary  votes  first  cast  for  State 
favorites  \vere  transferred  now  to  one,  now  to  the  other 
of  the  recognized  leaders  in  the  contest,  and  their  hopes 
sank  when  the  result  of  the  second  ballot  was  an 
nounced  :  Seward,  one  hundred  and  eighty- four  and 
one  half,  Lincoln,  one  hundred  and  eighty-one;  and  a 
volume  of  applause,  which  was  with  difficulty  checked 
by  the  chairman,  shook  the  Wigwam  at  this  announce 
ment. 

Then  followed  a  short  interval  of  active  caucusing 
in  the  various  delegations,  while  excited  men  went 
about  rapidly  interchanging  questions,  solicitations, 
and  messages  between  delegations  from  different 
States.  Neither  candidate  had  yet  received  a  major 
ity  of  all  the  votes  cast,  and  the  third  ballot  was  begun 
amid  a  deep,  almost  painful  suspense,  delegates  and 
spectators  alike  recording  each  announcement  of  votes 
on  their  tally-sheets  with  nervous  fingers.  But  the 
doubt  was  of  short  duration.  The  second  ballot  had 
unmistakably  pointed  out  the  winning  man.  Hesi 
tating  delegations  and  fragments  from  many  States 
steadily  swelled  the  Lincoln  column.  Long  before  the 
secretaries  made  the  official  announcement,  the  totals 
had  been  figured  up :  Lincoln,  two  hundred  and  thirty- 


LINCOLN  NOMINATED  151 

one  and  one  half,  Seward,  one  hundred  and  eighty. 
Counting  the  scattering  votes,  four  hundred  and  sixty- 
five  ballots  had  been  cast,  and  two  hundred  and  thirty- 
three  were  necessary  to  a  choice.  Seward  had  lost  four 
and  one  half,  Lincoln  had  gained  fifty  and  one  half, 
and  only  one  and  one  half  votes  more  were  needed  to 
make  a  nomination. 

The  Wigwam  suddenly  became  as  still  as  a  church, 
and  everybody  leaned  forward  to  see  whose  voice  would 
break  the  spell.  Before  the  lapse  of  a  minute,  David 
K.  Cartter  sprang  upon  his  chair  and  reported  a  change 
of  four  Ohio  votes  from  Chase  to  Lincoln.  Then  a 
teller  shouted  a  name  toward  the  skylight,  and  the 
boom  of  cannon  from  the  roof  of  the  Wigwam  an 
nounced  the  nomination  and  started  the  cheering  of 
the  overjoyed  Illinoisans  down  the  long  Chicago 
streets;  while  in  the  Wigwam,  delegation  after  dele 
gation  changed  its  vote  to  the  victor  amid  a  tumult  of 
hurrahs.  When  quiet  was  somewhat  restored,  Mr. 
Evarts,  speaking  for  New  York  and  for  Seward,  moved 
to  make  the  nomination  unanimous,  and  Mr.  Browning 
gracefully  returned  the  thanks  of  Illinois  for  the  honor 
the  convention  had  conferred  upon  the  State.  In  the 
afternoon  the  convention  completed  its  work  by  nom 
inating  Hannibal  Hamlin  of  Maine  for  Vice-President ; 
and  as  the  delegates  sped  homeward  in  the  night  trains, 
they  witnessed,  in  the  bonfires  and  cheering  crowds 
at  the  stations,  that  a  memorable  presidential  campaign 
was  already  begur- 


XI 


Candidates  and  Platforms  —  The  Political  Chances  —  Deca- 
tur  Lincoln  Resolution  —  John  Hanks  and  the  Lin 
coln  Rails—  The  Rail-Splitter  Candidate—  The  Wide- 
Awakes  —  Douglas's  Southern  Tour  —  Jefferson  Davis's 
Address  —  Fusion  —  Lincoln  at  the  State  House  —  The 
Election  Result 


nomination  of  Lincoln  at  Chicago  completed 
A  the  preparations  of  the  different  parties  of  the 
country  for  the  presidential  contest  of  1860;  and  pre 
sented  the  unusual  occurrence  of  an  appeal  to  the  voters 
of  the  several  States  by  four  distinct  political  organ 
izations.  In  the  order  of  popular  strength  which  they 
afterward  developed,  they  were  : 

1.  The  Republican  party,  whose  platform  declared 
in  substance  that  slavery  was  wrong,  and  that  its  fur 
ther  extension  should  be  prohibited  by  Congress.     Its 
candidates  were  Abraham  Lincoln  of  Illinois  for  Presi 
dent,    and    Hannibal    Hamlin    of    Maine    for    Vice- 
President. 

2.  The    Douglas    wing   of    the    Democratic    party, 
which  declared  indifference  whether  slavery  were  right 
or   wrong,   extended   or   prohibited,   and   proposed   to 
permit  the  people  of  a  Territory  to  decide  whether  they 
would  prevent   or   establish   it.      Its   candidates   were 
Stephen   A.    Douglas   of   Illinois   for    President,    and 
Herschel  V.  Johnson  of  Georgia  for  Vice-President. 

3.  The  Buchanan  wing  of  the  Democratic  party, 
which  declared  that  slavery  was  right  and  beneficial, 

152 


POLITICAL   CHANCES  153 

and  whose  policy  was  to  extend  the  institution,  and 
create  new  slave  States.  Its  candidates  were  John  C. 
Breckinridge  of  Kentucky  for  President,  and  Joseph 
Lane  of  Oregon  for  Vice-President. 

4.  The  Constitutional  Union  party,  which  professed 
to  ignore  the  question  of  slavery,  and  declared  it  would 
recognize  no  political  principles  other  than  "the  Con 
stitution  of  the  country,  the  union  of  the  States,  and 
the  enforcement  of  the  laws."  Its  candidates  were 
John  Bell  of  Tennessee  for  President,  and  Edward 
Everett  of  Massachusetts  for  Vice-President. 

In  the  array  of  these  opposing  candidates  and  their 
platforms,  it  could  be  easily  calculated  from  the  very 
beginning  that  neither  Lincoln  nor  Douglas  had  any 
chance  to  carry  a  slave  State,  nor  Breckinridge  nor 
Bell  to  carry  a  free  State;  and  that  neither  Douglas 
in  the  free  States,  nor  Bell  in  either  section  could  ob 
tain  electoral  votes  enough  to  succeed.  Therefore,  but 
two  alternatives  seemed  probable.  Either  Lincoln 
would  be  chosen  by  electoral  votes,  or,  upon  his  failure 
to  obtain  a  sufficient  number,  the  election  would  be 
thrown  into  the  House  of  Representatives,  in  which 
case  the  course  of  combination,  chance,  or  intrigue 
could  not  be  foretold.  The  political  situation  and  its 
possible  results  thus  involved  a  degree  of  uncertainty 
sufficient  to  hold  out  a  contingent  hope  to  all  the  candi 
dates,  and  to  inspire  the  followers  of  each  to  active 
exertion.  This  hope  and  inspiration,  added  to  the  hot 
temper  which  the  long  discussion  of  antagonistic  prin 
ciples  had  engendered,  served  to  infuse  into  the  cam 
paign  enthusiasm,  earnestness,  a"nd  even  bitterness,  ac 
cording  to  local  conditions  in  the  different  sections. 

In  campaign  enthusiasm  the  Republican  party  easily 
took  the  lead.  About  a  week  before  his  nomination, 
Mr-.  Lincoln  had  been  present  at  the  Illinois  State  con- 


154  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

vention  at  Decatur  in  Coles  County,  not  far  from  the 
old  Lincoln  home,  when,  at  a  given  signal,  there 
marched  into  the  convention  old  John  Hanks,  one  of 
his  boyhood  companions,  and  another  pioneer,  who 
bore  on  their  shoulders  two  long  fence  rails  decorated 
with  a  banner  inscribed  :  "Two  rails  from  a  lot  made  by 
Abraham  Lincoln  and  John  Hanks  in  the  Sangamon 
Bottom  in  the  year  1830."  They  were  greeted  with  a 
tremendous  shout  of  applause  from  the  whole  conven 
tion,  succeeded  by  a  united  call  for  Lincoln,  who  sat 
on  the  platform.  The  tumult  would  not  subside  until 
he  rose  to  speak,  when  he  said : 

"GENTLEMEN  :  I  suppose  you  want  to  know  some 
thing  about  those  things  [pointing  to  old  John  and  the 
rails].  Well,  the  truth  is,  John  Hanks  and  I  did  make 
rails  in  the  Sagamon  Bottom.  I  don't  know  whether 
we  made  those  rails  or  not;  fact  is,  I  don't  think  they 
are  a  credit  to  the  makers  [laughing  as  he  spoke]. 
But  I  do  know  this :  I  made  rails  then,  and  I  think  I 
could  make  better  ones  than  these  now." 

Still  louder  cheering  followed  this  short,  but  effec 
tive  reply.  But  the  convention  was  roused  to  its  full 
warmth  of  enthusiasm  when  a  resolution  was  imme 
diately  and  unanimously  adopted  declaring  that 
"Abraham  Lincoln  is  the  first  choice  of  the  Repub 
lican  party  of  Illinois  for  the  Presidency,"  and  direct 
ing  the  delegates  to  the  Chicago  convention  "to  use 
all  honorable  means  to  secure  his  nomination,  and  to 
cast  the  vote  of  the  State  as  a  unit  for  him." 

It  was  this  resolution  which  the  Illinois  delegation 
had  so  successfully  carried  out  at  Chicago.  And,  be 
sides,  they  had  carried  with  them  the  two  fence  rails, 
and  set  them  up  in  state  at  the  Lincoln  headquarters 
at  their  hotel,  where  enthusiastic  lady  friends  gaily 
trimmed  them  with  flowers  and  ribbons  and  lighted 


THE  "WIDE-AWAKES"  155 

them  up  with  tapers.  These  slight  preliminaries,  duly 
embellished  in  the  newspapers,  gave  the  key  to  the 
Republican  campaign,  which  designated  Lincoln  as  the 
Rail-splitter  Candidate,  and,  added  to  his  common  Illi 
nois  sobriquet  of  "Honest  Old  Abe,"  furnished  both 
country  and  city  campaign  orators  a  powerfully  sym 
pathetic  appeal  to  the  rural  and  laboring  element  of 
the  United  States. 

When  these  homely  but  picturesque  appellations 
were  fortified  by  the  copious  pamphlet  and  newspaper 
biographies  in  which  people  read  the  story  of  his  hum 
ble  beginnings,  and  how  he  had  risen,  by  dint  of  simple, 
earnest  work  and  native  genius,  through  privation  and 
difficulty,  first  to  fame  and  leadership  in  his  State,  and 
now  to  fame  and  leadership  in  the  nation,  they  grew 
quickly  into  symbols  of  a  faith  and  trust  destined  to 
play  no  small  part  in  a  political  revolution  of  which 
the  people  at  large  were  not  as  yet  even  dreaming. 

Another  feature  of  the  campaign  also  quickly  de 
veloped  itself.  On  the  preceding  5th  of  March,  one  of 
Mr.  Lincoln's  New  England  speeches  had  been  made 
at  Hartford,  Connecticut;  and  at  its  close  he  was  es 
corted  to  his  hotel  by  a  procession  of  the  local  Repub 
lican  club,  at  the  head  of  which  marched  a  few  of  its 
members  bearing  torches  and  wearing  caps  and  capes 
of  glazed  oilcloth,  the  primary  purpose  of  which  was  to 
shield  their  clothes  from  the  dripping  oil  of  their 
torches.  Both  the  simplicity  and  the  efficiency  of  the 
uniform  caught  the  popular  eye,  as  did  also  the  name, 
"Wide-Awakes,"  applied  to  them  by  the  "Hartford 
Courant."  The  example  found  quick  imitation  in 
Hartford  and  adjoining  towns,  and  when  Mr.  Lincoln 
was  made  candidate  for  President,  every  city,  town, 
and  nearly  every  village  in  the  North,  within  a  brief 
space,  had  its  organized  Wide-Awake  club,  with  their 


156  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

half-military  uniform  and  drill;  and  these  clubs  were 
often,  later  in  the  campaign,  gathered  into  imposing 
torch-light  processions,  miles  in  length,  on  occasions 
of  important  party  meetings  and  speech-making.  It 
was  the  revived  spirit  of  the  Harrison  campaign  of 
twenty  years  before;  but  now,  shorn  of  its  fun  and 
frolic,  it  was  strengthened  by  the  power  of  organiza 
tion  and  the  tremendous  impetus  of  earnest  devotion 
to  a  high  principle. 

It  was  a  noteworthy  feature  of  the  campaign  that 
the  letters  of  acceptance  of  all  the  candidates,  either  in 
distinct  words  or  unmistakable  implication,  declared 
devotion  to  the  Union,  while  at  the  same  time  the  ad 
herents  of  each  were  charging  disunion  sentiments  and 
intentions  upon  the  other  three  parties.  Douglas  him 
self  made  a  tour  of  speech-making  through  the  South 
ern  States,  in  which,  while  denouncing  the  political 
views  of  both  Lincoln  and  Breckinridge,  he  neverthe 
less  openly  declared,  in  response  to  direct  questions, 
that  no  grievance  could  justify  disunion,  and  that  he 
was  ready  "to  put  the  hemp  around  the  neck  and  hang 
any  man  who  would  raise  the  arm  of  resistance  to  the 
constituted  authorities  of  the  country." 

During  the  early  part  of  the  campaign  the  more  ex 
treme  Southern  fire-eaters  abated  somewhat  of  their 
violent  menaces  of  disunion.  Between  the  Charleston 
and  the  Baltimore  Democratic  conventions  an  address 
published  by  Jefferson  Davis  and  other  prominent 
leaders  had  explained  that  the  seventeen  Democratic 
States  which  had  voted  at  Charleston  for  the  seceders' 
platform  could,  if  united  with  Pennsylvania  alone, 
elect  the  Democratic  nominees  against  all  opposition. 
This  hope  doubtless  floated  before  their  eyes  like  a  will- 
o'-the-wisp  until  the  October  elections  dispelled  all  pos 
sibility  of  securing  Pennsylvania  for  Breckinridge. 


FUSION  157 

From  that  time  forward  there  began  a  renewal  of  dis 
union  threats,  which,  by  their  constant  increase 
throughout  the  South,  prepared  the  public  mind  of 
that  section  for  the  coming  secession. 

As  the  chances  of  Republican  success  gradually  grew 
stronger,  an  undercurrent  of  combination  developed  it 
self  among  those  politicians  of  the  three  opposing 
parties  more  devoted  to  patronage  than  principle,  to 
bring  about  the  fusion  of  Lincoln's  opponents  on 
some  agreed  ratio  of  a  division  of  the  spoils.  Such  a 
combination  made  considerable  progress  in  the  three 
Northern  States  of  New  York,  Pennsylvania,  and 
New  Jersey.  It  appears  to  have  been  engineered 
mainly  by  the  Douglas  faction,  though,  it  must  be  said 
to  his  credit,  against  the  open  and  earnest  protest  of 
Douglas  himself.  But  the  thrifty  plotters  cared  little 
for  his  disapproval. 

By  the  secret  manipulations  of  conventions  and  com 
mittees  a  fusion  electoral  ticket  was  formed  in  New 
York,  made  up  of  adherents  of  the  three  different 
factions  in  the  following  proportion :  Douglas,  eigh 
teen;  Bell,  ten;  Breckinridge,  seven;  and  the  whole 
opposition  vote  of  the  State  of  New  York  was  cast  for 
this  fusion  ticket.  The  same  tactics  were  pursued  in 
Pennsylvania,  where,  however,  the  agreement  was  not 
so  openly  avowed.  One  third  of  the  Pennsylvania  fu 
sion  electoral  candidates  were  pledged  to  Douglas;  the 
division  of  the  remaining  two  thirds  between  Bell  and 
Breckinridge  was  not  made  public.  The  bulk  of  the 
Pennsylvania  opposition  vote  was  cast  for  this  fusion 
ticket,  but  a  respectable  percentage  refused  to  be  bar 
gained  away,  and  voted  directly  for  Douglas  or  Bell. 
In  New  Jersey  a  definite  agreement  was  reached  by  the 
managers,  and  an  electoral  ticket  formed,  composed  of 
two  adherents  of  Bell,  two  of  Breckinridge,  and  three 


158  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

of  Douglas;  and  in  this  State  a  practical  result  was 
effected  by  the  movement.  A  fraction  of  the  Douglas 
voters  formed  a  straight  electoral  ticket,  adopting  the 
three  Douglas  candidates  on  the  fusion  ticket,  and  by 
this  action  these  three  Douglas  electors  received  a  ma 
jority  vote  in  New  Jersey.  On  the  whole,  however, 
the  fusion  movement  proved  ineffectual  to  defeat  Lin 
coln,  and,  indeed,  it  would  not  have  done  so  even  had 
the  fusion  electoral  tickets  received  a  majority  in  all 
three  of  the  above-named  States. 

The  personal  habits  and  surroundings  of  Mr.  Lin 
coln  were  varied  somewhat,  though  but  slightly,  during 
the  whole  of  this  election  summer.  Naturally,  he  with 
drew  at  once  from  active  work,  leaving  his  law  office 
and  his  whole  law  business  to  his  partner,  William  H. 
Herndon;  while  his  friends  installed  him  in  the  gov 
ernor's  room  in  the  State  House  at  Springfield,  which 
was  not  otherwise  needed  during  the  absence  of  the 
legislature.  Here  he  spent  the  time  during  the  usual 
business  hours  of  the  day,  attended  only  by  his  private 
secretary,  Mr.  Nicolay.  Friends  and  strangers  alike 
were  thus  able  to  visit  him  freely  and  without  cere 
mony,  and  they  availed  themselves  largely  of  the  op 
portunity.  Few,  if  any,  went  away  without  being 
favorably  impressed  by  his  hearty  Western  greeting, 
and  the  frank  sincerity  of  his  manner  and  conversation, 
in  which,  naturally,  all  subjects  of  controversy  were 
courteously  and  instinctively  avoided  by  both  the  can 
didate  and  his  visitors. 

By  none  was  this  free,  neighborly  intercourse  en 
joyed  more  than  by  the  old-time  settlers  of  Sangamon 
and  the  adjoining  counties,  who  came  to  revive  the 
incidents  and  memories  of  pioneer  days  with  one  who 
could  give  them  such  thorough  and  appreciative  in 
terest  and  sympathy.  He  employed  no  literary  bureau, 


CAMPAIGN   HABITS  159 

wrote  no  public  letters,  made  no  set  or  impromptu 
speeches,  except  that  once  or  twice  during  great  polit 
ical  meetings  at  Springfield  he  uttered  a  few  words 
of  greeting  and  thanks  to  passing  street  processions. 
All  these  devices  of  propagandism  he  left  to  the  leaders 
and  committees  of  his  adherents  in  their  several  States. 
Even  the  strictly  confidential  letters  in  which  he  indi 
cated  his  advice  on  points  in  the  progress  of  the  cam 
paign  did  not  exceed  a  dozen  in  number;  and  when 
politicians  came  to  interview  him  at  Springfield,  he 
received  them  in  the  privacy  of  his  own  home,  and  gen 
erally  their  presence  created  little  or  no  public  notice. 
Cautious  politician  as  he  was,  he  did  not  permit  himself 
to  indulge  in  any  over-confidence,  but  then,  as  always 
before,  showed  unusual  skill  in  estimating  political 
chances.  Thus  he  wrote  about  a  week  after  the  Chi 
cago  convention : 

"So  far  as  I  can  learn,  the  nominations  start  well 
everywhere ;  and,  if  they  get  no  backset,  it  would  seem 
as  if  they  are  going  through." 

Again,  on  July  4 : 

"Long  before  this  you  have  learned  who  was  nom 
inated  at  Chicago.  We  know  not  what  a  day  may 
bring  forth,  but  to-day  it  looks  as  if  the  Chicago  ticket 
will  be  elected." 

And  on  September  22,  to  a  friend  in  Oregon : 

"No  one  on  this  side  of  the  mountains  pretends  that 
any  ticket  can  be  elected  by  the  people,  unless  it  be  ours. 
Hence,  great  efforts  to  combine  against  us  are  being 
made,  which,  however,  as  yet  have  not  had  much  suc 
cess.  Besides  what  we  see  in  the  newspapers,  I  have 
a  good  deal  of  private  correspondence;  and,  without 
giving  details,  I  will  only  say  it  all  looks  very  favorable 
to  our  success." 

His  judgment  was  abundantly  verified  at  the  presi- 


1  60       ^     ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 


dential  election,  which  occurred  upon  November  6, 
1860.  Lincoln  electors  were  chosen  in  every  one  of  the 
free  States  except  New  Jersey,  where,  as  has  already 
been  stated,  three  Douglas  electors  received  majorities 
because  their  names  were  on  both  the  fusion  ticket  and 
the  straight  Douglas  ticket;  while  the  other  four  Re 
publican  electors  in  that  State  succeeded.  Of  the  slave 
States,  eleven  chose  Breckinridge  electors,  three  of 
them  Bell  electors,  and  one  of  them  —  Missouri  —  Doug 
las  electors.  As  provided  by  law,  the  electors  met  in 
their  several  States  on  December  5,  to  officially  cast 
their  votes,  and  on  February  13,  1861,  Congress  in 
joint  session  of  the  two  Houses  made  the  official  count 
as  follows  :  for  Lincoln,  one  hundred  and  eighty  ;  for 
Breckinridge,  seventy-two;  for  Bell,  thirty-nine;  and 
for  Douglas,  twelve;  giving  Lincoln  a  clear  majority 
of  fifty-seven  in  the  whole  electoral  college.  There 
upon  Breckinridge,  who  presided  over  the  joint  session, 
officially  declared  that  Abraham  Lincoln  was  duly 
elected  President  of  the  United  States  for  four  years, 
beginning  March  4, 


,  iS6i 


XII 


Lincoln's  Cabinet  Program — Members  from  the  South — 
Questions  and  Ansivers — Correspondence  with  Ste 
phens — Action  of  Congress — Peace  Convention — Prep 
aration  of  the  Inaugural — Lincoln's  Farewell  Address 
—The  Journey  to  Washington — Lincoln's  Midnight 
Journey 

DURING  the  long  presidential  campaign  of  1860, 
between  the  Chicago  convention  in  the  middle  of 
May  and  the  election  at  the  beginning  of  November, 
Mr.  Lincoln,  relieved  from  all  other  duties,  had 
watched  political  developments  \vith  very  close  atten 
tion,  not  merely  to  discern  the  progress  of  his  own 
chances,  but,  doubtless,  also,  much  more  seriously  to 
deliberate  upon  the  future  in  case  he  should  be  elected. 
But  it  was  only  when,  on  the  night  of  November  6, 
he  sat  in  the  telegraph  office  at  Springfield,  from  which 
all  but  himself  and  the  operators  were  excluded,  and 
read  the  telegrams  as  they  fell  from  the  wires,  that 
little  by  little  the  accumulating  Republican  major 
ities  reported  from  all  directions  convinced  him  of  the 
certainty  of  his  success ;  and  with  that  conviction  there 
fell  upon  him  the  overwhelming,  almost  crushing 
weight  of  his  coming  duties  and  responsibilities.  He 
afterward  related  that  in  that  supreme  hour,  grappling 
resolutely  with  the  mighty  problem  before  him,  he 
practically  completed  the  first  essential  act  of  his  ad- 

11  161 


162  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

ministration,  the  selection  of  his  future  cabinet — the 
choice  of  the  men  who  were  to  aid  him. 

From  what  afterward  occurred,  we  may  easily  infer 
the  general  principle  which  guided  his  choice.  One  of 
his  strongest  characteristics,  as  his  speeches  abundantly 
show,  was  his  belief  in  the  power  of  public  opinion, 
and  his  respect  for  the  popular  will.  That  was  to  be 
found  and  to  be  wielded  by  the  leaders  of  public  senti 
ment.  In  the  present  instance  there  were  no  truer 
representatives  of  that  will  than  the  men  who  had  been 
prominently  supported  by  the  delegates  to  the  Chicago 
convention  for  the  presidential  nominations.  Of  these 
he  would  take  at  least  three,  perhaps  four,  to  compose 
one  half  of  his  cabinet.  In  selecting  Seward,  Chase, 
Bates,  and  Cameron,  he  could  also  satisfy  two  other 
points  of  the  representative  principle,  the  claims  of  lo 
cality,  and  the  elements  of  former  party  divisions  now 
joined  in  the  newly  organized  Republican  party.  With 
Seward  from  New  York,  Cameron  from  Pennsylvania, 
Chase  from  Ohio,  and  himself  from  Illinois,  the  four 
leading  free  States  had  each  a  representative.  With 
Bates  from  Missouri,  the  South  could  not  complain  of 
being  wholly  excluded  from  the  cabinet.  New  Eng 
land  was  properly  represented  by  Vice- President  Ham- 
lin.  When,  after  the  inauguration,  Smith  from  Indi 
ana,  Welles  from  Connecticut,  and  Blair  from  Mary 
land  were  added  to  make  up  the  seven  cabinet  members, 
the  local  distribution  between  East  and  West,  North 
and  South,  was  in  no  wise  disturbed.  It  was,  indeed, 
complained  that  in  this  arrangement  there  were  four 
former  Democrats,  and  only  three  former  Whigs;  to 
which  Lincoln  laughingly  replied  that  he  had  been  a 
Whig,  and  would  be  there  to  make  the  number  even. 

It  is  not  likely  that  this  exact  list  was  in  Lincoln's 
mind  on  the  night  of  the  November  election,  but  only 


LINCOLN'S  CABINET  PROGRAM      163 

the  principal  names  in  it;  and  much  delay  and  some 
friction  occurred  before  its  completion.  The  post  of 
Secretary  of  State  was  offered  to  Seward  on  Decem 
ber  8. 

"Rumors  have  got  into  the  newspapers,"  wrote  Lin 
coln,  "to  the  effect  that  the  department  named  above 
would  be  tendered  you  as  a  compliment,  and  with 
the  expectation  that  you  would  decline  it.  I  beg  you 
to  be  assured  that  I  have  said  nothing  to  justify  these 
rumors.  On  the  contrary,  it  has  been  my  purpose, 
from  the  clay  of  the  nomination  at  Chicago,  to  assign 
you,  by  your  leave,  this  place  in  the  administration." 

Seward  asked  a  few  days  for  reflection,  and  then 
cordially  accepted.  Bates  was  tendered  the  Attorney- 
Generalship  on  December  15,  while  making  a  personal 
visit  to  Springfield.  Word  had  been  meanwhile  sent 
to  Smith  that  he  would  probably  be  included.  The 
assignment  of  places  to  Chase  and  Cameron  worked 
less  smoothly.  Lincoln  wrote  Cameron  a  note  on  Jan 
uary  3,  saying  he  would  nominate  him  for  either  Secre 
tary  of  the  Treasury  or  Secretary  of  War,  he  had  not 
yet  decided  which;  and  on  the  same  day,  in  an  inter 
view  with  Chase,  whom  he  had  invited  to  Springfield, 
said  to  him : 

"I  have  done  with  you  what  I  would  not  perhaps 
have  ventured  to  do  with  any  other  man  in  the  country 
— sent  for  you  to  ask  whether  you  will  accept  the 
appointment  of  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  without, 
however,  being  exactly  prepared  to  offer  it  to  you." 

They  discussed  the  situation  very  fully,  but  without 
reaching  a  definite  conclusion,  agreeing  to  await  the 
advice  of  friends.  Meanwhile,  the  rumor  that  Cameron 
was  to  go  into  the  cabinet  excited  such  hot  opposition 
that  Lincoln  felt  obliged  to  recall  his  tender  in  a  con 
fidential  letter;  and  asked  him  to  write  a  public  letter 


1 64  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

declining  the  place.  Instead  of  doing  this,  Cameron 
fortified  himself  with  recommendations  from  promi 
nent  Pennsylvanians,  and  demonstrated  that  in  his  own 
State  he  had  at  least  three  advocates  to  one  opponent. 

Pending  the  delay  which  this  contest  consumed,  an 
other  cabinet  complication  found  its  solution.  It  had 
been  warmly  urged  by  conservatives  that,  in  addition 
to  Bates,  another  cabinet  member  should  be  taken  from 
one  of  the  Southern  States.  The  difficulty  of  doing 
this  had  been  clearly  foreshadowed  by  Mr.  Lincoln  in  a 
little  editorial  which  he  wrote  for  the  Springfield 
"Journal"  On  December  12: 

"First.  Is  it  known  that  any  such  gentleman  of  char 
acter  would  accept  a  place  in  the  cabinet? 

"Second.  If  yea,  on  what  terms  does  he  surrender 
to  Mr.  Lincoln,  or  Mr.  Lincoln  to  him,  on  the  political 
differences  between  them,  or  do  they  enter  upon  the 
administration  in  open  opposition  to  each  other?" 

It  was  very  soon  demonstrated  that  these  differences 
were  insurmountable.  Through  Mr.  Seward,  who  was 
attending  his  senatorial  duties  at  Washington,  Mr. 
Lincoln  tentatively  offered  a  cabinet  appointment  suc 
cessively  to  Gilmer  of  North  Carolina,  Hunt  of  Loui 
siana,  and  Scott  of  Virginia,  no  one  of  whom  had  the 
courage  to  accept. 

Toward  the  end  of  the  recent  canvass,  and  still  more 
since  the  election,  Mr.  Lincoln  had  received  urgent  let 
ters  to  make  some  public  declaration  to  reassure  and 
pacify  the  South,  especially  the  cotton  States,  which 
were  manifesting  a  constantly  growing  spirit  of  rebel 
lion.  Most  of  such  letters  remained  unanswered,  but 
in  a  number  of  strictly  confidental  replies  he  explained 
the  reasons  for  his  refusal. 

"I  appreciate  your  motive,"  he  wrote  October  23, 
"when  you  suggest  the  propriety  of  my  writing  for 


LETTERS   TO   STEPHENS  165 

the  public  something  disclaiming  all  intention  to  inter 
fere  with  slaves  or  slavery  in  the  States;  but,  in  my 
judgment,  it  would  do  no  good.  I  have  already  done 
this  many,  many  times;  and  it  is  in  print,  and  open  to 
all  who  will  read.  Those  who  will  not  read  or  heed 
what  I  have  already  publicly  said,  would  not  read  or 
heed  a  repetition  of  it.  'If  they  hear  not  Moses  and 
the  prophets,  neither  will  they  be  persuaded  though  one 
rose  from  the  dead.' ' 

To  the  editor  of  the  "Louisville  Journal"  he  wrote 
October  29 : 

"For  the  good  men  of  the  South — and  I  regard  the 
majority  of  them  as  such — I  have  no  objection  to 
repeat  seventy  and  seven  times.  But  I  have  bad  men 
to  deal  with,  both  North  and  South;  men  who  are 
eager  for  something  new  upon  which  to  base  new  mis 
representations ;  men  who  would  like  to  frighten  me, 
or  at  least  to  fix  upon  me  the  character  of  timidity  and 
cowardice." 

Alexander  H.  Stephens  of  Georgia,  who  afterward 
became  Confederate  Vice-President,  made  a  strong 
speech  against  secession  in  that  State  on  November  14; 
and  Mr.  Lincoln  wrote  him  a  few  lines  asking  for  a 
revised  copy  of  it.  In  the  brief  correspondence  which 
ensued,  Mr.  Lincoln  again  wrote  him  under  date  of 
December  22 : 

"I  fully  appreciate  the  present  peril  the  country  is  in, 
and  the  weight  of  responsibility  on  me.  Do  the  people 
of  the  South  really  entertain  fears  that  a  Republican 
administration  would,  directly  or  indirectly,  interfere 
with  the  slaves,  or  with  them  about  the  slaves?  If 
they  do,  I  wish  to  assure  you,  as  once  a  friend,  and  still, 
I  hope,  not  an  enemy,  that  there  is  no  cause  for  such 
fears.  The  South  would  be  in  no  more  danger  in  this 
respect  than  it  was  in  the  days  of  Washington.  I  sup- 


1 66  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

pose,  however,  this  does  not  meet  the  case.  You  think 
slavery  is  right  and  ought  to  be  extended,  while  we 
think  it  is  wrong  and  ought  to  be  restricted.  That,  I 
suppose,  is  the  rub.  It  certainly  is  the  only  substantial 
difference  between  us." 

So,  also,  replying  a  few  days  earlier  in  a  long  letter 
to  Hon.  John  A.  Gilmer  of  North  Carolina,  to  whom, 
as  already  stated,  he  offered  a  cabinet  appointment,  he 
said: 

"On  the  territorial  question  I  am  inflexible,  as  you 
see  my  position  in  the  book.  On  that  there  is  a  differ 
ence  between  you  and  us ;  and  it  is  the  only  substantial 
difference.  You  think  slavery  is  right  and  ought  to  be 
extended;  we  think  it  is  wrong  and  ought  to  be  re 
stricted.  For  this  neither  has  any  just  occasion  to  be 
angry  with  the  other.  As  to  the  State  laws,  mentioned 
in  your  sixth  question,  I  really  know  very  little  of 
them.  I  never  have  read  one.  If  any  of  them  are  in 
conflict  with  the  fugitive-slave  .clause,  or  any  other  part 
of  the  Constitution,  I  certainly  shall  be  glad  of  their 
repeal;  but  I  could  hardly  be  justified,  as  a  citizen  of 
Illinois,  or  as  President  of  the  United  States,  to  rec 
ommend  the  repeal  of  a  statute  of  Vermont  or  South 
Carolina." 

Through  his  intimate  correspondence  with  Mr.  Sew- 
ard  and  personal  friends  in  Congress,  Mr.  Lincoln  was 
kept  somewhat  informed  of  the  hostile  temper  of  the 
Southern  leaders,  and  that  a  tremendous  pressure  was 
being  brought  upon  that  body  by  timid  conservatives 
and  the  commercial  interests  in  the  North  to  bring 
about  some  kind  of  compromise  which  would  stay  the 
progress  of  disunion ;  and  on  this  point  he  sent  an  em 
phatic  monition  to  Representative  Washburne  on  De 
cember  1 3 : 

"Your  long  letter  received.     Prevent  as  far  as  pos- 


ACTION   OF   CONGRESS  167 

sible  any  of  our  friends  from  demoralizing  themselves 
and  their  cause  by  entertaining  propositions  for  com 
promise  of  any  sort  on  slavery  extension.  There  is  no 
possible  compromise  upon  it  but  what  puts  us  under 
again,  and  all  our  work  to  do  over  again.  Whether  it 
be  a  Missouri  line  or  Eli  Thayer's  popular  sovereignty, 
it  is  all  the  same.  Let  either  be  done,  and  immediately 
filibustering  and  extending  slavery  recommences.  On 
that  point  hold  firm  as  a  chain  of  steel." 

Between  the  day  when  a  President  is  elected  by  pop 
ular  vote  and  that  on  which  he  is  officially  inaugu 
rated  there  exists  an  interim  of  four  long  months, 
during  which  he  has  no  more  direct  power  in  the  affairs 
of  government  than  any  private  citizen.  However  anx 
iously  Mr.  Lincoln  might  watch  the  development  of 
public  events  at  Washington  and  in  the  cotton  States ; 
whatever  appeals  might  come  to  him  through  inter 
views  or  correspondence,  no  positive  action  of  any  kind 
was  within  his  power,  beyond  an  occasional  word  of 
advice  or  suggestion.  The  position  of  the  Republican 
leaders  in  Congress  was  not  much  better.  Until  the 
actual  secession  of  States,  and  the  departure  of  their 
representatives,  they  were  in  a  minority  in  the  Senate; 
while  the  so-called  South  Americans  and  Anti-Lecomp- 
ton  Democrats  held  the  balance  of  power  in  the  House. 
The  session  was  mainly  consumed  in  excited,  profitless 
discussion.  Both  the  Senate  and  House  appointed 
compromise  committees,  which  met  and  labored,  but 
could  find  no  common  ground  of  agreement.  A  peace 
convention  met  and  deliberated  at  Washington,  with 
no  practical  result,  except  to  waste  the  powder  for  a 
salute  of  one  hundred  guns  over  a  sham  report  to 
which  nobody  paid  the  least  attention. 

Throughout  this  period  Mr.  Lincoln  was  by  no 
means  idle.  Besides  the  many  difficulties  he  had  to 


168  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

overcome  in  completing  his  cabinet,  he  devoted  himself 
to  writing  his  inaugural  address.  Withdrawing  him 
self  some  hours  each  day  from  his  ordinary  receptions, 
he  went  to  a  quiet  room  on  the  second  floor  of  the  store 
occupied  by  his  brother-in-law,  on  the  south  side  of  the 
public  square  in  Springfield,  where  he  could  think  and 
write  in  undisturbed  privacy.  When,  after  abundant 
reflection  and  revision,  he  had  finished  the  document, 
he  placed  it  in  the  hands  of  Mr.  William  H.  Bailhache, 
one  of  the  editors  of  the  "Illinois  State  Journal,"  who 
locked  himself  and  a  single  compositor  into  the  com 
posing-room  of  the  "Journal."  Here,  in  Mr.  Bail- 
hache's  presence,  it  was  set  up,  proof  taken  and  read, 
and  a  dozen  copies  printed ;  after  which  the  types  were 
again  immediately  distributed.  The  alert  newspaper 
correspondents  in  Springfield,  who  saw  Mr.  Lincoln 
every  day  as  usual,  did  not  obtain  the  slightest  hint  of 
what  was  going  on. 

Having  completed  his  arrangements,  Mr.  Lincoln 
started  on  his  journey  to  Washington  on  February  n, 
1 86 1,  on  a  special  train,  accompanied  by  Mrs.  Lincoln 
and  their  three  children,  his  two  private  secretaries, 
and  a  suite  of  about  a  dozen  personal  friends.  Mr. 
Seward  had  suggested  that  in  view  of  the  feverish  con 
dition  of  public  affairs,  he  should  come  a  week  earlier; 
but  Mr.  Lincoln  allowed  himself  only  time  enough 
comfortably  to  fill  the  appointments  he  had  made  to 
visit  the  capitals  and  principal  cities  of  the  States  on  his 
route,  in  accordance  with  non-partizan  invitations  from 
their  legislatures  and  mayors,  which  he  had  accepted. 
Standing  on  the  front  platform  of  the  car,  as  the  con 
ductor  was  about  to  pull  the  bell-rope,  Mr.  Lincoln 
made  the  following  brief  and  pathetic  address  of  fare 
well  to  his  friends  and  neighbors  of  Springfield — the 
last  time  his  voice  was  ever  to  be  heard  in  the  city 
which  had  been  his  home  for  so  many  years : 


FAREWELL  ADDRESS  169 

"Mv  FRIENDS  :  No  one,  not  in  my  situation,  can  ap 
preciate  my  feeling  of  sadness  at  this  parting.  To  this 
place,  and  the  kindness  of  these  people,  I  owe  every 
thing.  Here  I  have  lived  a  quarter  of  a  century,  and 
have  passed  from  a  young  to  an  old  man.  Here  my 
children  have  been  born,  and  one  is  buried.  I  now 
leave,  not  knowing  when  or  whether  ever  I  may  return, 
with  a  task  before  me  greater  than  that  which  rested 
upon  Washington.  Without  the  assistance  of  that 
Divine  Being  who  ever  attended  him,  I  cannot  succeed. 
With  that  assistance.  I  cannot  fail.  Trusting  in  Him 
who  can  go  with  me,  and  remain  with  you,  and  be 
everywhere  for  good,  let  us  confidently  hope  that  all 
will  yet  be  well.  To  His  care  commending  you,  as  I 
hope  in  your  prayers  you  will  commend  me,  I  bid  you 
an  affectionate  farewell." 

It  was  the  beginning  of  a  memorable  journey.  On 
the  whole  route  from  Springfield  to  Washington,  at 
almost  every  station,  even  the  smallest,  was  gathered 
a  crowd  of  people  in  hope  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  face 
of  the  President-elect,  or,  at  least,  to  see  the  flying  train. 
At  the  larger  stopping-places  these  gatherings  were 
swelled  to  thousands,  and  in  the  great  cities  into  almost 
unmanageable  assemblages.  Everywhere  there  were 
vociferous  calls  for  Mr.  Lincoln,  and,  if  he  showed 
himself,  for  a  speech.  Whenever  there  was  sufficient 
time,  he  \vould  step  to  the  rear  platform  of  the  car  and 
bow  his  acknowledgments  as  the  train  was  moving 
away,  and  sometimes  utter  a  few  words  of  thanks  and 
greeting.  At  the  capitals  of  Indiana,  Ohio,  New  York, 
New  Jersey,  and  Pennsylvania,  as  also  in  the  cities  of 
Cincinnati,  Cleveland,  Buffalo,  New  York,  and  Phila 
delphia,  a  halt  was  made  for  one  or  two  days,  and  a 
program  was  carried  out  of  a  formal  visit  and  brief 
address  to  each  house  of  the  legislature,  street  proces 
sions,  large  receptions  in  the  evening,  and  other  similar 


i;o  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

ceremonies;  and  in  each  of  them  there  was  an  unpre 
cedented  outpouring  of  the  people  to  take  advantage 
of  every  opportunity  to  see  and  to  hear  the  future  Chief 
Magistrate  of  the  Union. 

Party  foes  as  well  as  party  friends  made  up  these 
expectant  crowds.  The  public  suspense  was  at  a  de 
gree  of  tension  which  rendered  every  eye  and  ear  eager 
to  catch  even  the  slightest  indication  of  the  thoughts 
or  intentions  of  the  man  who  was  to  be  the  official 
guide  of  the  nation  in  a  crisis  the  course  and  end  of 
which  even  the  wisest  dared  not  predict.  In  the  twenty 
or  thirty  brief  addresses  delivered  by  Mr.  Lincoln  on 
this  journey,  he  observed  the  utmost  caution  of  utter 
ance  and  reticence  of  declaration;  yet  the  shades  of 
meaning  in  his  carefully  chosen  sentences  were  enough 
to  show  how  alive  he  was  to  the  trials  and  dangers  con 
fronting  his  administration,  and  to  inspire  hope  and 
confidence  in  his  judgment.  He  repeated  that  he 
regarded  the  public  demonstrations  not  as  belonging 
to  himself,  but  to  the  high  office  with  which  the  peo 
ple  had  clothed  him;  and  that  if  he  failed,  they  could 
four  years  later  substitute  a  better  man  in  his  place; 
and  in  his  very  first  address,  at  Indianapolis,  he  thus 
emphasized  their  reciprocal  duties : 

"If  the  union  of  these  States  and  the  liberties  of  this 
people  shall  be  lost,  it  is  but  little  to  any  one  man  of 
fifty-two  years  of  age,  but  a  great  deal  to  the  thirty  mil 
lions  of  people  who  inhabit  these  United  States,  and  to 
their  posterity  in  all  coming  time.  It  is  your  business  to 
rise  up  and  preserve  the  Union  and  liberty  for  your 
selves,  and  not  for  me.  ...  I  appeal  to  you  again 
to  constantly  bear  in  mind  that  not  with  politicians, 
not  with  Presidents,  not  with  office-seekers,  but  with 
you,  is  the  question,  Shall  the  Union  and  shall  the 
liberties  of  this  country  be  preserved  to  the  latest  gen 
erations?" 


JOURNEY  TO   WASHINGTON          171 

Many  salient  and  interesting  quotations  could  be 
made  from  his  other  addresses,  but  a  comparatively 
few  sentences  will  be  sufficient  to  enable  the  reader 
to  infer  what  was  likely  to  be  his  ultimate  conclusion 
and  action.  In  his  second  speech  at  Indianapolis  he 
asked  the  question : 

"On  what  rightful  principle  may  a  State,  being  not 
more  than  one-fiftieth  part  of  the  nation  in  soil  and 
population,  break  up  the  nation,  and  then  coerce  a  pro 
portionally  larger  subdivision  of  itself  in  the  most  ar 
bitrary  way?" 

At  Steubenville : 

"If  the  majority  should  not  rule,  who  would  be  the 
judge?  Where  is  such  a  judge  to  be  found?  We 
should  all  be  bound  by  the  majority  of  the  American 
people — if  not,  then  the  minority  must  control.  Would 
that  be  right?" 

At  Trenton : 

"I  shall  do  all  that  may  be  in  my  power  to  promote 
a  peaceful  settlement  of  all  our  difficulties.  The  man 
does  not  live  who  is  more  devoted  to  peace  than  I  am, 
none  who  would  do  more  to  preserve  it,  but  it  may  be 
necessary  to  put  the  foot  down  firmly." 

At  Harrisburg: 

"While  I  am  exceedingly  gratified  to  see  the  mani 
festation  upon  your  streets  of  your  military  force  here, 
and  exceedingly  gratified  at  your  promise  to  use  that 
force  upon  a  proper  emergency — while  I  make  these 
acknowledgments,  I  desire  to  repeat,  in  order  to  pre 
clude  any  possible  misconstruction,  that  I  do  most  sin 
cerely  hope  that  we  shall  have  no  use  for  them;  that 
it  will  never  become  their  duty  to  shed  blood,  and  most 
especially  never  to  shed  fraternal  blood.  I  promise 
that  so  far  as  I  may  have  wisdom  to  direct,  if  so  painful 
a  result  shall  in  any  wise  be  brought  about,  it  shall  be 
through  no  fault  of  mine." 


i;2  ABRAHAM   LINCOLN 

While  Mr.  Lincoln  was  yet  at  Philadelphia,  he  was 
met  by  Mr.  Frederick  W.  Seward,  son  of  Senator 
Seward,  who  brought  him  an  important  communica 
tion  from  his  father  and  General  Scott  at  Washing 
ton.  About  the  beginning  of  the  year  serious  appre 
hension  had  been  felt  lest  a  sudden  uprising  of  the 
secessionists  in  Virginia  and  Maryland  might  endea 
vor  to  gain  possession  of  the  national  capital.  An 
investigation  by  a  committee  of  Congress  found  no 
active  military  preparation  to  exist  for  such  a  purpose, 
but  considerable  traces  of  disaffection  and  local  con 
spiracy  in  Baltimore;  and,  to  guard  against  such  an 
outbreak,  President  Buchanan  had  permitted  his  Secre 
tary  of  War,  Mr.  Holt,  to  call  General  Scott  to  Wash 
ington  and  charge  him  with  the  safety  of  the  city,  not 
only  at  that  moment,  but  also  during  the  counting  of 
the  presidential  returns  in  February,  and  the  coming 
inauguration  of  Mr.  Lincoln.  For  this  purpose  Gen 
eral  Scott  had  concentrated  at  Washington  a  few  com 
panies  from  the  regular  army,  and  also,  in  addition, 
had  organized  and  armed  about  nine  hundred  men  of 
the  militia  of  the  District  of  Columbia. 

In  connection  with  these  precautions,  Colonel  Stone, 
who  commanded  these  forces,  had  kept  himself  in 
formed  about  the  disaffection  in  Baltimore,  through 
the  agency  of  the  New  York  police  department.  The 
communication  brought  by  young  Mr.  Seward  con 
tained,  besides  notes  from  his  father  and  General  Scott, 
a  short  report  from  Colonel  Stone,  stating  that  there 
had  arisen  within  the  past  few  days  imminent  danger 
of  violence  to  and  the  assassination  of  Mr.  Lincoln  in 
his  passage  through  Baltimore,  should  the  time  of  that 
passage  be  known. 

"All  risk,"  he  suggested,  "might  be  easily  avoided  by 
a  change  in  the  traveling  arrangements  which  would 


MIDNIGHT  JOURNEY  173 

bring  Mr.  Lincoln  and  a  portion  of  his  party  through 
Baltimore  by  a  night  train  without  previous  notice." 

The  seriousness  of  this  information  was  doubled  by 
the  fact  that  Mr.  Lincoln  had,  that  same  day,  held  an 
interview  with  a  prominent  Chicago  detective  who  had 
been  for  some  weeks  employed  by  the  president  of  the 
Philadelphia,  Wilmington  and  Baltimore  railway  to  in 
vestigate  the  danger  to  their  property  and  trains  from 
the  Baltimore  secessionists.  The  investigations  of  this 
detective,  a  Mr.  Pinkerton,  had  been  carried  on  with 
out  the  knowledge  of  the  New  York  detective,  and  he 
reported  not  identical,  but  almost  similar,  conditions 
of  insurrectionary  feeling  and  danger,  and  recom 
mended  the  same  precaution. 

Mr.  Lincoln  very  earnestly  debated  the  situation 
with  his  intimate  personal  friend,  Hon.  N.  B.  Judd  of 
Chicago,  perhaps  the  most  active  and  influential  mem 
ber  of  his  suite,  who  advised  him  to  proceed  to  Wash 
ington  that  same  evening  on  the  eleven-o'clock  train. 
"I  cannot  go  to-night,"  replied  Mr.  Lincoln;  "I  have 
promised  to  raise  the  flag  over  Independence  Hall  to 
morrow  morning,  and  to  visit  the  legislature  at  Harris- 
burg.  Beyond  that  I  have  no  engagements." 

The  railroad  schedule  by  which  Mr.  Lincoln  had 
hitherto  been  traveling  included  a  direct  trip  from 
Harrisburg,  through  Baltimore,  to  Washington  on 
Saturday,  February '23.  When  the  Harrisburg  ceremo 
nies  had  been  concluded  on  the  afternoon  of  the  22d, 
the  danger  and  the  proposed  change  of  program  were 
for  the  first  time  fully  laid  before  a  confidential  meet 
ing  of  the  prominent  members  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  suite. 
Reasons  were  strongly  urged  both  for  and  against  the 
plan;  but  Mr.  Lincoln  finally  decided  and  explained 
that  while  he  himself  was  not  afraid  he  would  be 
assassinated,  nevertheless,  since  the  possibility  of  dan- 


174  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

ger  had  been  made  known  from  two  entirely  indepen 
dent  sources,  and  officially  communicated  to  him  by 
his  future  prime  minister  and  the  general  of  the  Amer 
ican  armies,  he  was  no  longer  at  liberty  to  disregard  it ; 
that  it  was  not  the  question  of  his  private  life,  but  the 
regular  and  orderly  transmission  of  the  authority  of 
the  government  of  the  United  States  in  the  face  of 
threatened  revolution,  which  he  had  no  right  to  put 
in  the  slightest  jeopardy.  He  would,  therefore,  carry 
out  the  plan,  the  full  details  of  which  had  been  ar 
ranged  with  the  railroad  officials. 

Accordingly,  that  same  evening,  he,  with  a  single 
companion,  Colonel  W.  H.  Lamon,  took  a  car  from 
Harrisburg  back  to  Philadelphia,  at  which  place,  about 
midnight,  they  boarded  the  through  train  from  New 
York  to  Washington,  and  without  recognition  or  any 
untoward  incident  passed  quietly  through  Baltimore, 
and  reached  the  capital  about  daylight  on  the  morning 
of  February  23,  where  they  were  met  by  Mr.  Seward 
and  Representative  Washburne  of  Illinois,  and  con 
ducted  to  Willard's  Hotel. 

When  Mr.  Lincoln's  departure  from  Harrisburg  be 
came  known,  a  reckless  newspaper  correspondent  tele 
graphed  to  New  York  the  ridiculous  invention  that  he 
traveled  disguised  in  a  Scotch  cap  and  long  military 
cloak.  There  was  not  one  word  of  truth  in  the  absurd 
statement.  Mr.  Lincoln's  family  and  suite  proceeded 
to  Washington  by  the  originally  arranged  train  and 
schedule,  and  witnessed  great  crowds  in  the  streets  of 
Baltimore,  but  encountered  neither  turbulence  nor  in 
civility  of  any  kind.  There  was  now,  of  course,  no 
occasion  for  any,  since  the  telegraph  had  definitely  an 
nounced  that  the  President-elect  was  already  in  Wash 
ington. 


XIII 

The  Secession  Movement — South  Carolina  Secession 
Buchanan's  Neglect — Disloyal  Cabinet  Members — 
Washington  Central  Cabal — Anderson's  Transfer  to 
Sumter — Star  of  the  West — Montgomery  Rebellion- 
Davis  and  Stephens — Corner-stone  Theory — Lincoln 
Inaugurated — His  Inaugural  Address — Lincoln's  Cabi 
net — The  Question  of  Sumter — Seivard's  Memorandum 
— Lincoln's  Answer — Bombardment  of  Sumter — An 
derson's  Capitulation 

IT  is  not  the  province  of  these  chapters  to  relate  in 
detail  the  course  of  the  secession  movement  in  the 
cotton  States  in  the  interim  which  elapsed  between  the 
election  and  inauguration  of  President  Lincoln.  Still 
less  can  space  be  given  to  analyze  and  set  forth  the 
lamentable  failure  of  President  Buchanan  to  employ 
the  executive  authority  and  power  of  the  government 
to  prevent  it,  or  even  to  hinder  its  development,  by  any 
vigorous  opposition  or  adequate  protest.  The  deter 
mination  of  South  Carolina  to  secede  was  announced 
by  the  governor  of  that  State  a  month  before  the  presi 
dential  election,  and  on  the  day  before  the  election  he 
sent  the  legislature  of  the  State  a  revolutionary  mes 
sage  to  formally  inaugurate  it.  From  that  time  for 
ward  the  whole  official  machinery  of  the  State  not 
only  led,  but  forced  the  movement  which  culminated 
on  December  20  in  the  ordinance  of  secession  by  the 
South  Carolina  convention. 

This  official  revolution  in  South  Carolina  was  quickly 


1 76  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

imitated  by  similar  official  revolutions  ending  in  seces 
sion  ordinances  in  the  States  of  Mississippi,  on  January 
9,  1 86 1 ;  Florida,  January  10;  Alabama,  January  n; 
Georgia,  January  19;  Louisiana,  January  26;  and  by 
a  still  bolder  usurpation  in  Texas,  culminating  on 
February  i.  From  the  day  of  the  presidential  election 
all  these  proceedings  were  known  probably  more  fully 
to  President  Buchanan  than  to  the  general  public,  be 
cause  many  of  the  actors  were  his  personal  and  party 
friends ;  while  almost  at  their  very  beginning  he  became 
aware  that  three  members  of  his  cabinet  were  secretly 
or  openly  abetting  and  promoting  them  by  their  official 
influence  and  power. 

Instead  of  promptly  dismissing  these  unfaithful  ser 
vants,  he  retained  one  of  them  a  month,  and  the  others 
twice  that  period,  and  permitted  them  so  far  to  influ 
ence  his  official  conduct,  that  in  his  annual  message 
to  Congress  he  announced  the  fallacious  and  paradox 
ical  doctrine  that  though  a  State  had  no  right  to 
secede,  the  Federal  government  had  no  right  to  coerce 
her  to  remain  in  the  Union. 

Nor  could  he  justify  his  non-action  by  the  excuse 
that  contumacious  speeches  and  illegal  resolves  of  par 
liamentary  bodies  might  be  tolerated  under  the  Amer 
ican  theory  of  free  assemblage  and  free  speech.  Al 
most  from  the  beginning  of  the  secession  movement,  it 
was  accompanied  from  time  to  time  by  overt  acts  both 
of  treason  and  war;  notably,  by  the  occupation  and 
seizure  by  military  order  and  force  of  the  seceding 
States,  of  twelve  or  fifteen  harbor  forts,  one  extensive 
navy-yard,  half  a  dozen  arsenals,  three  mints,  four  im 
portant  custom-houses,  three  revenue  cutters,  and  a 
variety  of  miscellaneous  Federal  property;  for  all  of 
which  insults  to  the  flag,  and  infractions  of  the  sov 
ereignty  of  the  United  States,  President  Buchanan 


ANDERSON'S  TRANSFER  TO  SUMTER  177 

could  recommend  no  more  efficacious  remedy  or  redress 
than  to  ask  the  voters  of  the  country  to  reverse  their  de 
cision  given  at  the  presidential  election,  and  to  appoint 
a  day  of  fasting  and  prayer  on  which  to  implore  the 
Most  High  "to  remove  from  our  hearts  that  false  pride 
of  opinion  which  would  impel  us  to  persevere  in  wrong 
for  the  sake  of  consistency." 

Nor  must  mention  be  omitted  of  the  astounding  phe 
nomenon  that,  encouraged  by  President  Buchanan's 
doctrine  of  non-coercion  and  purpose  of  non-action,  a 
central  cabal  of  Southern  senators  and  representatives 
issued  from  Washington,  on  December  14,  their  public 
proclamation  of  the  duty  of  secession;  their  executive 
committee  using  one  of  the  rooms  of  the  Capitol  build 
ing  itself  as  the  headquarters  of  the  conspiracy  and  re 
bellion  they  were  appointed  to  lead  and  direct. 

During  the  month  of  December,  while  the  active 
treason  of  cotton-State  officials  and  the  fatal  neglect 
of  the  Federal  executive  \vere  in  their  most  damaging 
and  demoralizing  stages,  an  officer  of  the  United  States 
army  had  the  high  courage  and  distinguished  honor  to 
give  the  ever-growing  revolution  its  first  effective 
check.  Major  Robert  Anderson,  though  a  Kentuckian 
by  birth  and  allied  by  marriage  to  a  Georgia  family, 
was,  late  in  November,  placed  in  command  of  the  Fed 
eral  forts  in  Charleston  harbor;  and  having  repeatedly 
reported  that  his  little  garrison  of  sixty  men  was  in 
sufficient  for  the  defense  of  Fort  Moultrie,  and  vainly 
asked  for  reinforcements  which  were  not  sent  him, 
he  suddenly  and  secretly,  on  the  night  after  Christmas, 
transferred  his  command  from  the  insecure  position 
of  Moultrie  to  the  strong  and  unapproachable  walls  of 
Fort  Sumter,  midway  in  the  mouth  of  Charleston 
harbor,  where  he  could  not  be  assailed  by  the  raw 
Charleston  militia  companies  that  had  for  wreeks  been 

12 


1 78  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

threatening  him  with  a  storming  assault.  In  this 
stronghold,  surrounded  on  all  sides  by  water,  he  loyally 
held  possession  for  the  government  and  sovereignty  of 
the  United  States. 

The  surprised  and  baffled  rage  of  the  South  Caro 
lina  rebels  created  a  crisis  at  Washington  that  resulted 
in  the  expulsion  of  the  President's  treacherous  coun 
selors  and  the  reconstruction  of  Mr.  Buchanan's  cab 
inet  to  unity  and  loyalty.  The  new  cabinet,  though 
unable  to  obtain  President  Buchanan's  consent  to 
aggressive  measures  to  reestablish  the  Federal  author 
ity,  was,  nevertheless,  able  to  prevent  further  conces 
sions  to  the  insurrection,  and  to  effect  a  number  of  im 
portant  defensive  precautions,  among  which  was  the 
already  mentioned  concentration  of  a  small  military 
force  to  protect  the  national  capital. 

Meanwhile,  the  governor  of  South  Carolina  had  be 
gun  the  erection  of  batteries  to  isolate  and  besiege  Fort 
Sumter ;  and  the  first  of  these,  on  a  sand-spit  of  Morris 
Island  commanding  the  main  ship-channel,  by  a  few 
shots  turned  back,  on  January  9,  the  merchant  steamer 
Star  of  the  West,  in  which  General  Scott  had  attempted 
to  send  a  reinforcement  of  two  hundred  recruits  to 
Major  Anderson.  Battery  building  was  continued 
with  uninterrupted  energy  until  a  triangle  of  siege 
works  was  established  on  the  projecting  points  of 
neighboring  islands,  mounting  a  total  of  thirty  guns 
and  seventeen  mortars,  manned  and  supported  by  a 
volunteer  force  of  from  four  to  six  thousand  men. 

Military  preparation,  though  not  on  so  extensive  or 
definite  a  scale,  was  also  carried  on  in  the  other  revolted 
States;  and  while  Mr.  Lincoln  was  making  his  mem 
orable  journey  from  Springfield  to  Washington,  tele 
grams  were  printed  in  the  newspapers,  from  day  to  day, 
showing  that  their  delegates  had  met  at  Montgomery, 


CORNER-STONE  THEORY  179 

Alabama,  formed  a  provisional  congress,  and  adopted 
a  constitution  and  government  under  the  title  of  The 
Confederate  States  of  America,  of  which  they  elected 
Jefferson  Davis  of  Mississippi  President,  and  Alexan 
der  H.  Stephens  of  Georgia  Vice-President. 

It  needs  to  be  constantly  borne  in  mind  that  the  be 
ginning  of  this  vast  movement  was  not  a  spontaneous 
revolution,  but  a  chronic  conspiracy.  "The  secession 
of  South  Carolina,"  truly  said  one  of  the  chief  actors, 
"is  not  an  event  of  a  day.  It  is  not  anything  produced 
by  Mr.  Lincoln's  election,  or  by  the  non-execution  of 
the  fugitive-slave  law.  It  is  a  matter  which  has  been 
gathering  head  for  thirty  years."  The  central  motive 
and  dominating  object  of  the  revolution  was  frankly 
avowed  by  Vice-President  Stephens  in  a  speech  he 
made  at  Savannah  a  few  weeks  after  his  inauguration : 

"The  prevailing  ideas  entertained  by  him  [Jeffer 
son]  and  most  of  the  leading  statesmen  at  the  time  of 
the  formation  of  the  old  Constitution,  were  that  the 
enslavement  of  the  African  was  in  violation  of  the  laws 
of  nature ;  that  it  was  wrong  in  principle,  socially,  mor 
ally,  and  politically.  .  .  .  Our  new  government  is 
founded  upon  exactly  the  opposite  idea ;  its  foundations 
are  laid,  its  corner-stone  rests  upon  the  great  truth,  that 
the  negro  is  not  equal  to  the  white  man;  that  slavery 
— subordination  to  the  superior  race — is  his  natural 
and  normal  condition.  This,  our  new  government,  is 
the  first,  in  the  history  of  the  world,  based  upon  this 
great  physical,  philosophical,  and  moral  truth." 

In  the  week  which  elapsed  between  Mr.  Lincoln's  ar 
rival  in  Washington  and  the  day  of  inauguration,  he 
exchanged  the  customary  visits  of  ceremony  with 
President  Buchanan,  his  cabinet,  the  Supreme  Court, 
the  two  Houses  of  Congress,  and  other  dignitaries.  In 
his  rooms  at  Willard's  Hotel  he  also  held  consultations 


i8o  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

with  leading  Republicans  about  the  final  composition 
of  his  cabinet  and  pressing  questions  of  public  policy. 
Careful  preparations  had  been  made  for  the  inaugura 
tion,  and  under  the  personal  eye  of  General  Scott  the 
military  force  in  the  city  was  ready  instantly  to  sup 
press  any  attempt  to  disturb  the  peace  or  quiet  of  the 
day. 

On  March  4  the  outgoing  and  incoming  Presidents 
rode  side  by  side  in  a  carriage  from  the  Executive 
Mansion  to  the  Capitol  and  back,  escorted  by  an  im 
posing  military  and  civic  procession;  and  an  immense 
throng  of  spectators  heard  the  new  Executive  read  his 
inaugural  address  from  the  east  portico  of  the  Capitol. 
He  stated  frankly  that  a  disruption  of  the  Federal 
Union  was  being  formidably  attempted,  and  discussed 
dispassionately  the  theory  and  illegality  of  secession. 
He  held  that  the  Union  was  perpetual ;  that  resolves 
and  ordinances  of  disunion  are  legally  void ;  and  an 
nounced  that  to  the  extent  of  his  ability  he  would  faith 
fully  execute  the  laws  of  the  Union  in  all  the  States. 
The  power  confided  to  him  would  be  used  to  hold, 
occupy,  and  possess  the  property  and  places  belonging 
to  the  government,  and  to  collect  the  duties  and  im 
posts.  But  beyond  what  might  be  necessary  for  these 
objects  there  would  be  no  invasion,  no  using  of  force 
against  or  among  the  people  anywhere.  Where  hostil 
ity  to  the  United  States  in  any  interior  locality  should 
be  so  great  and  universal  as  to  prevent  competent  resi 
dent  citizens  from  holding  the  Federal  offices,  there 
would  be  no  attempt  to  force  obnoxious  strangers 
among  them  for  that  object.  The  mails,  unless  re 
pelled,  would  continue  to  be  furnished  in  all  parts  of 
the  Union ;  and  this  course  would  be  followed  until 
current  events  and  experience  should  show  a  change 
to  be  necessary.  To  the  South  he  made  an  earnest 


INAUGURAL   ADDRESS  18 1 

plea  against  the  folly  of  disunion,  and  in  favor  of 
maintaining  peace  and  fraternal  good  will ;  declaring 
that  their  property,  peace,  and  personal  security  were 
in  no  clanger  from  a  Republican  administration. 

"One  section  of  our  country  believes  slavery  is  right 
and  ought  to  be  extended,"  he  said,  "while  the  other 
believes  it  is  wrong  and  ought  not  to  be  extended;  that 
is  the  only  substantial  dispute.  .  .  .  Physically 
speaking,  we  cannot  separate.  We  cannot  remove  our 
respective  sections  from  each  other,  nor  build  an  im 
passable  wall  between  them.  A  husband  and  wife  may 
be  divorced,  and  go  out  of  the  presence  and  beyond  the 
reach  of  each  other ;  but  the  different  parts  of  our  coun 
try  cannot  do  this.  They  cannot  but  remain  face  to 
face,  and  intercourse,  either  amicable  or  hostile,  must 
continue  between  them.  Is  it  possible,  then,  to  make 
that  intercourse  more  advantageous  or  more  satisfac 
tory  after  separation  than  before?  Can  aliens  make 
treaties  easier  than  friends  can  make  laws?  Can  trea 
ties  be  more  faithfully  enforced  between  aliens,  than 
laws  can  among  friends  ?  Suppose  you  go  to  war,  you 
cannot  fight  always ;  and  when,  after  much  loss  on  both 
sides  and  no  gain  on  either,  you  cease  lighting,  the 
identical  old  questions  as  to  terms  of  intercourse  are 
again  upon  you.  ...  In  your  hands,  my  dissatis 
fied  fellow-countrymen,  and  not  in  mine,  is  the  momen 
tous  issue  of  civil  war.  The  government  will  not 
assail  you.  You  can  have  no  conflict  without  being 
yourselves  the  aggressors.  ...  I  am  loath  to  close. 
We  are  not  enemies,  but  friends.  We  must  not  be 
enemies.  Though  passion  may  have  strained,  it  must 
not  break  our  bonds  of  affection.  The  mystic  chords 
of  memory,  stretching  from  every  battle-field  and 
patriot  grave  to  every  living  heart  and  hearthstone 
all  over  this  broad  land,  will  yet  swell  the  chorus  of 


1 82  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

the  Union,  when  again  touched,  as  surely  they  will  be, 
by  the  better  angels  of  our  nature." 

But  the  peaceful  policy  here  outlined  was  already 
more  difficult  to  follow  than  Mr.  Lincoln  was  aware. 
On  the  morning  after  inauguration  the  Secretary  of 
War  brought  to  his  notice  freshly  received  letters  from 
Major  Anderson,  commanding  Fort  Sumter  in  Charles 
ton  harbor,  announcing  that  in  the  course  of  a  few 
weeks  the  provisions  of  the  garrison  would  be  ex 
hausted,  and  therefore  an  evacuation  or  surrender 
would  become  necessary,  unless  the  fort  were  relieved 
by  supplies  or  reinforcements;  and  this  information 
was  accompanied  by  the  written  opinions  of  the  officers 
that  to  relieve  the  fort  would  require  a  well-appointed 
army  of  twenty  thousand  men. 

The  new  President  had  appointed  as  his  cabinet 
William  H.  Seward,  Secretary  of  State;  Salmon  P. 
Chase,  Secretary  of  the  Treasury;  Simon  Cameron, 
Secretary  of  War;  Gideon  Welles,  Secretary  of  the 
Navy;  Caleb  B.  Smith,  Secretary  of  the  Interior; 
Montgomery  Blair,  Postmaster-General;  and  Edward 
Bates,  Attorney-General.  The  President  and  his  offi 
cial  advisers  at  once  called  into  counsel  the  highest 
military  and  naval  officers  of  the  Union  to  consider  the 
new  and  pressing  emergency  revealed  by  the  unex 
pected  news  from  Sumter.  The  professional  experts 
were  divided  in  opinion.  Relief  by  a  force  of  twenty 
thousand  men  was  clearly  out  of  the  question.  No 
such  Union  army  existed,  nor  could  one  be  created 
within  the  limit  of  time.  The  officers  of  the  navy 
thought  that  men  and  supplies  might  be  thrown  into  the 
fort  by  swift-going  vessels,  while  on  the  other  hand  the 
army  officers  believed  that  such  an  expedition  would 
surely  be  destroyed  by  the  formidable  batteries  which 
the  insurgents  had  erected  to  close  the  harbor.  In  view 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUMTER          183 

of  all  the  conditions,  Lieutenant-General  Scott,  general- 
in-chief  of  the  army,  recommended  the  evacuation  of 
the  fort  as  a  military  necessity. 

President  Lincoln  thereupon  asked  the  several  mem 
bers  of  his  cabinet  the  written  question :  "Assuming 
it  to  be  possible  to  now  provision  Fort  Sumter,  under 
all  the  circumstances  is  it  wise  to  attempt  it?"  Only 
two  members  replied  in  the  affirmative,  while  the  other 
five  argued  against  the  attempt,  holding  that  the  coun 
try  would  recognize  that  the  evacuation  of  the  fort 
was  not  an  indication  of  policy,  but  a  necessity  created 
by  the  neglect  of  the  old  administration.  Under  this 
advice,  the  President  withheld  his  decision  until  he 
could  gather  further  information. 

Meanwhile,  three  commissioners  had  arrived  from 
the  provisional  government  at  Montgomery,  Alabama, 
under  instructions  to  endeavor  to  negotiate  a  de  facto 
and  de  jure  recognition  of  the  independence  of  the 
Confederate  States.  They  were  promptly  informed 
by  Mr.  Seward  that  he  could  not  receive  them ;  that  he 
did  not  see  in  the  Confederate  States  a  rightful  and 
accomplished  revolution  and  an  independent  nation; 
and  that  he  was  not  at  liberty  to  recognize  the  com 
missioners  as  diplomatic  agents,  or  to  hold  correspon 
dence  with  them.  Failing  in  this  direct  application, 
they  made  further  efforts  through  Mr.  Justice  Camp 
bell  of  the  Supreme  Court,  as  a  friendly  intermediary, 
who  came  to  Seward  in  the  guise  of  a  loyal  official, 
though  his  correspondence  with  Jefferson  Davis  soon 
revealed  a  treasonable  intent;  and,  replying  to  Camp 
bell's  earnest  entreaties  that  peace  should  be  main 
tained,  Seward  informed  him  confidentially  that  the 
military  status  at  Charleston  would  not  be  changed 
without  notice  to  the  governor  of  South  Carolina.  On 
March  29  a  cabinet  meeting  for  the  second  time  dis- 


1 84  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

cussed  the  question  of  Sumter.  Four  of  the  seven 
members  now  voted  in  favor  of  an  attempt  to  supply 
the  fort  with  provisions,  and  the  President  signed  a 
memorandum  order  to  prepare  certain  ships  for  such 
an  expedition,  under  the  command  of  Captain  G.  V. 
Fox. 

So  far,  Mr.  Lincoln's  new  duties  as  President  of  the 
United  States  had  not  in  any  wise  put  him  at  a  disad 
vantage  with  his  constitutional  advisers.  Upon  the 
old  question  of  slavery  he  was  as  well  informed  and 
had  clearer  convictions  and  purposes  than  either  Sew- 
ard  or  Chase.  And  upon  the  newer  question  of 
secession,  and  the  immediate  decision  about  Fort 
Sumter  which  it  involved,  the  members  of  his  cabinet 
were,  like  himself,  compelled  to  rely  on  the  profes 
sional  advice  of  experienced  army  and  navy  officers. 
Since  .  these  differed  radically  in  their  opinions,  the 
President's  own  powers  of  perception  and  logic  were 
as  capable  of  forming  a  correct  decision  as  men  who 
had  been  governors  and  senators.  He  had  reached 
at  least  a  partial  decision  in  the  memorandum  he  gave 
Fox  to  prepare  ships  for  the  Sumter  expedition. 

It  must  therefore  have  been  a  great  surprise  to  the 
President  when,  on  April  i,  Secretary  of  State  Seward 
handed  him  a  memorandum  setting  forth  a  number  of 
most  extraordinary  propositions.  For  a  full  enumera 
tion  of  the  items  the  reader  must  carefully  study  the 
entire  document,  which  is  printed  below  in  a  foot-note  j1 

1  SOME  THOUGHTS  FOR  THE  culpable,  and  it  has  even  been  un- 

PRESIDENT'S  CONSIDERATION.  avoidable.     The    presence   of    the 

APRIL  i,    1 86 1.  Senate,  with  the  need  to  meet  ap 
plications  for  patronage,  have  pre- 

First.     We  are  at  the  end  of  a  vented  attention  to  other  and  more 

month's    administration,    and    yet  grave  matters. 

without  a  policy,   either  domestic  Third.       But    further    delay    to 

or  foreign.  adopt  and  prosecute   our  policies 

Second.     This,  however,  is  not  for  both  domestic  and  foreign  af- 


SEWARD'S  MEMORANDUM 


'85 


but  the  principal  points  for  which  it  had  evidently  been 
written  and  presented  can  be  given  in  a  few  sentences. 
A  month  has  elapsed,  and  the  administration  has 
neither  a  domestic  nor  a  foreign  policy.  The  adminis 
tration  must  at  once  adopt  and  carry  out  a  novel,  radi 
cal,  and  aggressive  policy.  It  must  cease  saying  a 
word  about  slavery,  and  raise  a  great  outcry  about 
Union.  It  must  declare  war  against  France  and  Spain, 


fairs  would  not  only  bring  scandal 
on  the  administration,  but  danger 
upon  the  country. 

Fourth.  To  do  this  we  must 
dismiss  the  applicants  for  office. 
But  how?  I  suggest  that  we  make 
the  local  appointments  forthwith, 
leaving  foreign  or  general  ones  for 
ulterior  and  occasional  action. 

Fifth.  The  policy  at  home.  I 
am  aware  that  my  views  are  singu 
lar,  and  perhaps  not  sufficiently  ex 
plained.  My  system  is  built  upon 
this  idea  as  a  ruling  one,  namely, 
that  we  must 

CHANGE  THE  QUESTION  BEFORE 
THE  PUBLIC  FROM  ONE  UPON 
SLAVERY,  OR  ABOUT  SLAVERY,  for 

a  question  upon  UNION  OR  DIS 
UNION. 

In  other  words,  from  what  would 
be  regarded  as  a  party  question,  to 
one  of  Patriotism  or  Union. 

The  occupation  or  evacuation  of 
Fort  Sumter,  although  not  in  fact 
a  slavery  or  a  party  question,  is  so 
regarded.  Witness  the  temper 
manifested  by  the  Republicans  in 
the  free  States,  and  even  by  the 
Union  men  in  the  South. 

I  would  therefore  terminate  it  as 
a  safe  means  for  changing  the  issue. 
I  deem  it  fortunate  that  the  last  ad 
ministration  created  the  necessity. 

For  the  rest,  I  would  simulta 
neously  defend  and  reinforce  all  the 
ports  in  the  Gulf,  and  have  the 
navy  recalled  from  foreign  stations 
to  be  prepared  for  a  blockade.  Put 


the  island  of  Key  West  under  mar 
tial  law. 

This  will  raise  distinctly  the 
question  of  Union  or  Disunion. 
I  would  maintain  every  fort  and 
possession  in  the  South. 

FOR  FOREIGN  NATIONS. 

I  would  demand  explanations 
from  Spain  and  France,  categor 
ically,  at  once. 

I  would  seek  explanations  from 
Great  Britain  and  Russia,  and  send 
agents  into  Canada,  Mexico,  and 
Central  America,  to  rouse  a  vigor 
ous  continental  spirit  of  indepen 
dence  on  this  continent  against  Eu 
ropean  intervention. 

And,  if  satisfactory  explanations 
are  not  received  from  Spain  and 
France, 

Would  convene  Congress  and  de 
clare  war  against  them. 

But  whatever  policy  we  adopt, 
there  must  be  an  energetic  prose 
cution  of  it. 

For  this  purpose  it  must  be 
somebody's  business  to  pursue  and 
direct  it  incessantly. 

Either  the  President  must  do  it 
himself,  and  be  all  the  while  active 
in  it,  or 

Devolve  it  on  some  member  of  his 
cabinet.  Once  adopted,  debates  on 
it  must  end,  and  all  agree  and  abide. 

It  is  not  in  my  especial  province. 

But  I  neither  seek  to  evade  nor 
assume  responsibility. 


1 86  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

and  combine  and  organize  all  the  governments  of  North 
and  South  America  in  a  crusade  to  enforce  the  Mon 
roe  Doctrine.  This  policy  once  adopted,  it  must  be  the 
business  of  some  one  incessantly  to  pursue  it.  "It  is 
not  in  my  especial  province,"  wrote  Mr.  Seward ;  "but 
I  neither  seek  to  evade  nor  assume  responsibility." 
This  phrase,  which  is  a  key  to  the  whole  memorandum, 
enables  the  reader  easily  to  translate  its  meaning  into 
something  like  the  following : 

After  a  month's  trial,  you,  Mr.  Lincoln,  are  a  failure 
as  President.  The  country  is  in  desperate  straits,  and 
must  use  a  desperate  remedy.  That  remedy  is  to  sub 
merge  the  South  Carolina  insurrection  in  a  continental 
war.  Some  new  man  must  take  the  executive  helm, 
and  wield  the  undivided  presidential  authority.  I 
should  have  been  nominated  at  Chicago,  and  elected  in 
November,  but  am  willing  to  take  your  place  and  per 
form  your  duties. 

Why  William  H.  Seward,  who  is  fairly  entitled  to 
rank  as  a  great  statesman,  should  have  written  this 
memorandum  and  presented  it  to  Mr.  Lincoln,  has 
never  been  explained ;  nor  is  it  capable  of  explanation. 
Its  suggestions  were  so  visionary,  its  reasoning  so 
fallacious,  its  assumptions  so  unwarranted,  its  conclu 
sions  so  malapropos,  that  it  falls  below  critical  exam 
ination.  Had  Mr.  Lincoln  been  an  envious  or  a  resent 
ful  man,  he  could  not  have  wished  for  a  better  occasion 
to  put  a  rival  under  his  feet. 

The  President  doubtless  considered  the  incident  one 
of  phenomenal  strangeness,  but  it  did  not  in  the  least 
disturb  his  unselfish  judgment  or  mental  equipoise. 
There  was  in  his  answer  no  trace  of  excitement  or 
passion.  He  pointed  out  in  a  few  sentences  of  simple, 
quiet  explanation  that  what  the  administration  had 
done  was  exactly  a  foreign  and  domestic  policy  which 


LINCOLN'S   ANSWER  187 

the  Secretary  of  State  himself  had  concurred  in  and 
helped  to  frame.  Only,  that  Mr.  Seward  proposed 
to  go  further  and  give  up  Sumter.  Upon  the  central 
suggestion  that  some  one  mind  must  direct,  Mr.  Lin 
coln  wrote  with  simple  dignity : 

"If  this  must  be  done,  I  must  do  it.  When  a  gen 
eral  line  of  policy  is  adopted,  I  apprehend  there  is  no 
danger  of  its  being  changed  without  good  reason,  or 
continuing  to  be  a  subject  of  unnecessary  debate;  still, 
upon  points  arising  in  its  progress  I  wish,  and  suppose 
I  am  entitled  to  have,  the  advice  of  all  the  cabinet." 

Mr.  Lincoln's  unselfish  magnanimity  is  the  central 
marvel  of  the  whole  affair.  His  reply  ended  the  argu 
ment.  Mr.  Seward  doubtless  saw  at  once  how  com 
pletely  he  had  put  himself  in  the  President's  power. 
Apparently,  neither  of  the  men  ever  again  alluded  to 
the  incident.  No  other  persons  except  Mr.  Seward's 
son  and  the  President's  private  secretary  ever  saw  the 
correspondence,  or  knew  of  the  occurrence.  The  Presi 
dent  put  the  papers  away  in  an  envelop,  and  no  word 
of  the  affair  came  to  the  public  until  a  quarter  of  a 
century  later,  when  the  details  were  published  in  Mr. 
Lincoln's  biography.  In  one  mind,  at  least,  there  was 
no  further  doubt  that  the  cabinet  had  a  master,  for  only 
some  weeks  later  Mr.  Seward  is  known  to  have  writ 
ten  :  "There  is  but  one  vote  in  the  cabinet,  and  that  is 
cast  by  the  President"  This 'mastery  Mr.  Lincoln 
retained  with  a  firm  dignity  throughout  his  adminis 
tration.  When,  near  the  close  of  the  war,  he  sent  Mr. 
Seward  to  meet  the  rebel  commissioners  at  the  Hamp 
ton  Roads  conference,  he  finished  his  short  letter  of 
instructions  with  the  imperative  sentence:  "You  will 
not  assume  to  definitely  consummate  anything." 

From  this  strange  episode  our  narrative  must  return 
to  the  question  of  Fort  Sumter.  On  April  4,  official 


1 88  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

notice  was  sent  to  Major  Anderson  of  the  coming  re 
lief,  with  the  instruction  to  hold  out  till  the  eleventh  or 
twelfth  if  possible;  but  authorizing  him  to  capitulate 
whenever  it  might  become  necessary  to  save  himself 
and  command.  Two  days  later  the  President  sent  a 
special  messenger  with  written  notice  to  the  governor 
of  South  Carolina  that  an  attempt  would  be  made  to 
supply  Fort  Sumter  with  provisions  only;  and  that  if 
such  attempt  were  not  resisted,  no  further  effort  would 
be  made  to  throw  in  men,  arms,  or  ammunition,  with 
out  further  notice,  or  unless  in  case  of  an  attack  on  the 
fort. 

The  building  of  batteries  around  Fort  Sumter  had 
been  begun,  under  the  orders  of  Governor  Pickens, 
about  the  first  of  January,  and  continued  with  industry 
and  energy;  and  about  the  first  of  March  General 
Beauregard,  an  accomplished  engineer  officer,  was  sent 
by  the  Confederate  government  to  take  charge  of  and 
complete  the  works.  On  April  i  he  telegraphed  to 
Montgomery :  ''Batteries  ready  to  open  Wednesday 
or  Thursday.  What  instructions?" 

At  this  point,  the  Confederate  authorities  at  Mont 
gomery  found  themselves  face  to  face  with  the  fatal 
alternative  either  to  begin  war  or  to  allow  their  rebel 
lion  to  collapse.  Their  claim  to  independence  was 
denied,  their  commissioners  were  refused  a  hearing; 
yet  not  an  angry  word,  provoking  threat,  nor  harm 
ful  act  had  come  from  President  Lincoln.  He  had 
promised  them  peace,  protection,  freedom  from  irri 
tation  ;  had  offered  them  the  benefit  of  the  mails.  Even 
now,  all  he  proposed  to  do  was — not  to  send  guns  or 
ammunition  or  men  to  Sumter,  but  only  bread  and 
provisions  to  Anderson  and  his  soldiers.  His  prudent 
policy  placed  them  in  the  exact  attitude  described  a 
month  earlier  in  his  inaugural :  they  could  have  no 


BOMBARDMENT   OF   SUMTER         189 

conflict  without  being  themselves  the  aggressors.  But 
the  rebellion  was  organized  by  ambitious  men  with 
desperate  intentions.  A  member  of  the  Alabama  legis 
lature,  present  at  Montgomery,  said  to  Jefferson  Davis 
and  three  members  of  his  cabinet :  "Gentlemen,  unless 
you  sprinkle  blood  in  the  face  of  the  people  of  Alabama, 
they  will  be  back  in  the  old  Union  in  less  than  ten 
days."  And  the  sanguinary  advice  was  adopted.  In 
answer  to  his  question,  "What  instructions?"  Beaure- 
gard  on  April  10  was  ordered  to  demand  the  evacua 
tion  of  Fort  Sumter,  and,  in  case  of  refusal,  to  reduce  it. 

The  demand  was  presented  to  Anderson,  who  replied 
that  he  would  evacuate  the  fort  by  noon  of  April  15, 
unless  assailed,  or  unless  he  received  supplies  or  con 
trolling  instructions  from  his  government.  This  an 
swer  being  unsatisfactory  to  Beauregard,  he  sent 
Anderson  notice  that  he  would  open  fire  on  Sumter 
at  4  120  on  the  morning  of  April  12. 

Promptly  at  the  hour  indicated  the  bombardment 
was  begun.  As  has  been  related,  the  rebel  siege- works 
were  built  on  the  points  of  the  islands  forming  the  har 
bor,  at  distances  varying  from  thirteen  hundred  to 
twenty-five  hundred  yards,  and  numbered  nineteen 
batteries,  with  an  armament  of  forty-seven  guns,  sup 
ported  by  a  land  force  of  from  four  to  six  thousand 
volunteers.  The  disproportion  between  means  of  at 
tack  and  defense  was  enormous.  Sumter,  though  a 
work  three  hundred  by  three  hundred  and  fifty  feet  in 
size,  with  well-constructed  walls  and  casemates  of 
brick,  was  in  very  meager  preparation  for  such  a  con 
flict.  Of  its  forty-eight  available  guns,  only  twenty- 
one  were  in  the  casemates,  twenty-seven  being  on  the 
rampart  en  barbette.  The  garrison  consisted  of  nine 
commissioned  officers,  sixty-eight  non-commissioned 
officers  and  privates,  eight  musicians,  and  forty-three 


190  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

non-combatant  workmen  compelled  by  the  besiegers 
to  remain  to  hasten  the  consumption  of  provisions. 

Under  the  fire  of  the  seventeen  mortars  in  the  rebel 
batteries,  Anderson  could  reply  only  with  a  vertical 
fire  from  the  guns  of  small  caliber  in  his  casemates, 
which  was  of  no  effect  against  the  rebel  bomb-proofs 
of  sand  and  roofs  of  sloping  railroad  iron ;  but,  refrain 
ing  from  exposing  his  men  to  serve  his  barbette  guns, 
his  garrison  was  also  safe  in  its  protecting  casemates. 
It  happened,  therefore,  that  although  the  attack  was 
spirited  and  the  defense  resolute,  the  combat  went  on 
for  a  day  and  a  half  without  a  single  casualty.  It  came 
to  an  end  on  the  second  day  only  when  the  cartridges 
of  the  garrison  were  exhausted,  and  the  red-hot  shot 
from  the  rebel  batteries  had  set  the  buildings  used  as 
officers'  quarters  on  fire,  creating  heat  and  smoke  that 
rendered  further  defense  impossible. 

There  was  also  the  further  discouragement  that  the 
expedition  of  relief  which  Anderson  had  been  in 
structed  to  look  for  on  the  eleventh  or  twelfth,  had 
failed  to  appear.  Several  unforeseen  contingencies  had 
prevented  the  assembling  of  the  vessels  at  the  appointed 
rendezvous  outside  Charleston  harbor,  though  some 
of  them  reached  it  in  time  to  hear  the  opening  guns 
of  the  bombardment.  But  as  accident  had  deranged 
and  thwarted  the  plan  agreed  upon,  they  could  do 
nothing  except  impatiently  await  the  issue  of  the  fight. 

A  little  after  noon  of  April  13,  when  the  flagstaff  of 
the  fort  had  been  shot  away  and  its  guns  remained 
silent,  an  invitation,  to  capitulate  with  the  honors  of 
war  came  from  General  Beauregard,  which  Anderson 
accepted;  and  on  the  following  day,  Sunday,  April  14, 
he  hauled  down  his  flag  with  impressive  ceremonies, 
and  leaving  the  fort  with  his  faithful  garrison,  pro 
ceeded  in  a  steamer  to  New  York. 


XIV 

President's  Proclamation  Calling  for  Seventy-five  Regi 
ments — Responses  of  the  Governors — Maryland  and 
Virginia — The  Baltimore  Riot — Washington  Isolated 
— Lincoln  Takes  the  Responsibility — Robert  E.  Lee — 
Arrival  of  the  New  York  Seventh — Suspension  of  Ha 
beas  Corpus — The  Annapolis  Route — Butler  in  Balti 
more — Taney  on  the  Merry  man  Case — Kentucky — 
Missouri — Lyon  Captures  Camp  Jackson — Boonville 
Skirmish — The  Missouri  Convention — Gamble  made 
Governor — The  Border  States 

THE  bombardment  of  Fort  Sumter  changed  the 
political  situation  as  if  by  magic.  There  was  no 
longer  room  for  doubt,  hesitation,  concession,  or  com 
promise.  Without  awaiting  the  arrival  of  the  ships  that 
were  bringing  provisions  to  Anderson's  starving  garri 
son,  the  hostile  Charleston  batteries  had  opened  their 
fire  on  the  fort  by  the  formal  order  of  the  Confederate 
government,  and  peaceable  secession  was,  without 
provocation,  changed  to  active  war.  The  rebels  gained 
possession  of  Charleston  harbor ;  but  their  mode  of  ob 
taining  it  awakened  the  patriotism  of  the  American 
people  to  a  stern  determination  that  the  insult  to  the 
national  authority  and  flag  should  be  redressed,  and 
the  unrighteous  experiment  of  a  rival  government 
founded  on  slavery  as  its  corner-stone  should  never 
succeed.  Under  the  conflict  thus  begun  the  long-tol 
erated  barbarous  institution  itself  was  destined  ignobly 
to  perish. 

191 


192  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

On  his  journey  from  Springfield  to  Washington 
Mr.  Lincoln  had  said  that,  devoted  as  he  was  to  peace, 
he  might  find  it  necessary  "to  put  the  foot  down 
firmly."  That  time  had  now  come.  On  the  morning 
of  April  15,  1861,  the  leading  newspapers  of  the  coun 
try  printed  the  President's  proclamation  reciting  that, 
whereas  the  laws  of  the  United  States  were  opposed  and 
the  execution  thereof  obstructed  in  the  States  of  South 
Carolina,  Georgia,  Alabama,  Florida,  Mississippi, 
Louisiana,  and  Texas,  by  combinations  too  power 
ful  to  be  suppressed  by  the  ordinary  course  of  judicial 
proceedings,  the  militia  of  the  several  States  of  the 
Union,  to  the  aggregate  number  of  seventy-five  thou 
sand,  was  called  forth  to  suppress  said  combinations 
and  cause  the  laws  to  be  duly  executed.  The  orders 
of  the  War  Department  specified  that  the  period  of  ser 
vice  under  this  call  should  be  for  three  months;  and 
to  further  conform  to  the  provisions  of  the  Act  of 
1795,  under  which  the  call  was  issued,  the  President's 
proclamation  also  convened  the  Congress  in  special 
session  on  the  coming  fourth  of  July. 

Public  opinion  in  the  free  States,  which  had  been 
sadly  demoralized  by  the  long  discussions  over  slavery, 
and  by  the  existence  of  four  factions  in  the  late  presi 
dential  campaign,  was  instantly  crystallized  and  con 
solidated  by  the  Sumter  bombardment  and  the  Presi 
dent's  proclamation  into  a  sentiment  of  united  support 
to  the  government  for  the  suppression  of  the  rebellion. 
The  several  free-State  governors  sent  loyal  and  enthu 
siastic  responses  to  the  call  for  militia,  and  tendered 
double  the  numbers  asked  for.  The  people  of  the  slave 
States  which  had  not  yet  joined  the  Montgomery 
Confederacy — namely,  Virginia,  North  Carolina, 
Tennessee,  Arkansas,  Missouri,  Kentucky,  Maryland, 
and  Delaware — remained,  however,  more  or  less  di- 


BALTIMORE  RIOT  193 

vided  on  the  issue  as  it  now  presented  itself.  The  gov 
ernors  of  the  first  six  of  these  were  already  so  much  en 
gaged  in  the  secret  intrigues  of  the  secession  movement 
that  they  sent  the  Secretary  of  War  contumacious  and 
insulting  replies,  and  distinct  refusals  to  the  President's 
call  for  troops.  The  governor  of  Delaware  answered 
that  there  was  no  organized  militia  in  his  State  which 
he  had  legal  authority  to  command,  but  that  the  officers 
of  organized  volunteer  regiments  might  at  their  own 
option  offer  their  services  to  the  United  States;  while 
the  governor  of  Maryland,  in  complying  with  the  re 
quisition,  stipulated  that  the  regiments  from  his  State 
should  not  be  required  to  serve  outside  its  limits, 
except  to  defend  the  District  of  Columbia. 

A  swift,  almost  bewildering  rush  of  events,  however, 
quickly  compelled  most  of  them  to  take  sides.  Seces 
sion  feeling  was  rampant  in  Baltimore;  and  when  the 
first  armed  and  equipped  Northern  regiment,  the  Mas 
sachusetts  Sixth,  passed  through  that  city  on  the 
morning  of  April  19,  on  its  way  to  Washington,  the 
last  four  of  its  companies  were  assailed  by  street  mobs 
with  missiles  and  firearms  while  marching  from  one 
depot  to  the  other ;  and  in  the  running  fight  which  en 
sued,  four  of  its  soldiers  were  killed  and  about  thirty 
wounded,  while  the  mob  probably  lost  two  or  three 
times  as  many.  This  tragedy  instantly  threw  the  whole 
city  into  a  wild  frenzy  of  insurrection.  That  same 
afternoon  an  immense  secession  meeting  in  Monument 
Square  listened  to  a  torrent  of  treasonable  protest  and 
denunciation,  in  which  Governor  Hicks  himself  was 
made  momentarily  to  join.  The  militia  was  called  out, 
preparations  were  made  to  arm  the  city,  and  that  night 
the  railroad  bridges  were  burned  between  Baltimore 
and  the  Pennsylvania  line  to  prevent  the  further  transit 
of  Union  regiments.  The  revolutionary  furor  spread 

13 


194  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

to  the  country  towns,  and  for  a  whole  week  the  Union 
flag  practically  disappeared  from  Maryland. 

While  these  events  were  taking  place  to  the  north, 
equally  threatening  incidents  were  occurring  to  the 
south  of  Washington.  The  State  of  Virginia  had  been 
for  many  weeks  balancing  uneasily  between  loyalty 
and  secession.  In  the  new  revolutionary  stress  her 
weak  remnant  of  conditional  Unionism  gave  way;  and 
on  April  17,  two  days  after  the  President's  call,  her 
State  convention  secretly  passed  a  secession  ordinance, 
while  Governor  Letcher  ordered  a  military  seizure  of 
the  United  States  navy-yard  at  Norfolk  and  the 
United  States  armory  at  Harper's  Ferry.  Under 
orders  from  Washington,  both  establishments  were 
burned  to  prevent  their  falling  into  insurrectionary 
hands;  but  the  destruction  in  each  case  was  only  par 
tial,  and  much  valuable  war  material  thus  passed  to 
rebel  uses. 

All  these  hostile  occurrences  put  the  national  capital 
in  the  greatest  danger.  For  three  days  it  was  entirely 
cut  off  from  communication  with  the  North  by  either 
telegraph  or  mail.  Under  the  orders  of  General  Scott, 
the  city  was  hastily  prepared  for  a  possible  siege.  The 
flour  at  the  mills,  and  other  stores  of  provisions  were 
taken  possession  of.  The  Capitol  and  other  public 
buildings  were  barricaded,  and  detachments  of  troops 
stationed  in  them.  Business  was  suspended  by  a  com 
mon  impulse;  streets  were  almost  deserted  except  by 
squads  of  military  patrol ;  shutters  of  stores,  and  even 
many  residences,  remained  unopened  throughout  the 
day.  The  signs  were  none  too  reassuring.  In  addition 
to  the  public  rumors  whispered  about  by  serious  faces 
on  the  streets,  General  Scott  reported  in  writing  to 
President  Lincoln  on  the  evening  of  April  22 : 

"Of  rumors,  the  following  are  probable,  viz. :  First, 


WASHINGTON  ISOLATED  195 

that  from  fifteen  hundred  to  two  thousand  troops  are 
at  the  White  House  (four  miles  below  Mount  Vernon, 
a  narrow  point  in  the  Potomac),  engaged  in  erecting  a 
battery;  Second,  that  an  equal  force  is  collected  or  in 
progress  of  assemblage  on  the  two  sides  of  the  river 
to  attack  Fort  Washington ;  and  Third,  that  extra  cars 
went  up  yesterday  to  bring  down  from  Harper's 
Ferry  about  two  thousand  other  troops  to  join  in  a 
general  attack  on  this  capital — that  is,  on  many  of  its 
fronts  at  once.  I  feel  confident  that  with  our  present 
forces  we  can  defend  the  Capitol,  the  Arsenal,  and  all 
the  executive  buildings  (seven)  against  ten  thousand 
troops  not  better  than  our  District  volunteers." 

Throughout  this  crisis  President  Lincoln  not  only 
maintained  his  composure,  but  promptly  assumed  the 
high  responsibilities  the  occasion  demanded.  On  Sun 
day,  April  21,  he  summoned  his  cabinet  to  meet  at  the 
Navy  Department,  and  with  their  unanimous  concur 
rence  issued  a  number  of  emergency  orders  relating  to 
the  purchase  of  ships,  the  transportation  of  troops  and 
munitions  of  war,  the  advance  of  $2,000,000  of  money 
to  a  Union  Safety  Committee  in  New  York,  and  other 
military  and  naval  measures,  which  were  despatched 
in  duplicate  by  private  messengers  over  unusual  and 
circuitous  routes.  In  a  message  to  Congress,  in  which 
he  afterward  explained  these  extraordinary  transac 
tions,  he  said : 

"It  became  necessary  for  me  to  choose  whether, 
using  only  the  existing  means,  agencies,  and  processes 
which  Congress  had  provided,  I  should  let  the  govern 
ment  fall  at  once  into  ruin,  or  whether,  availing  myself 
of  the  broader  powers  conferred  by  the  Constitution 
in  cases  of  insurrection,  I  would  make  an  effort  to  save 
it  with  all  its  blessings  for  the  present  age  and  for 
posterity." 


196  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Unwelcome  as  was  the  thought  of  a  possible  capture 
of  Washington  city,  President  Lincoln's  mind  was 
much  more  disturbed  by  many  suspicious  indications 
of  disloyalty  in  public  officials,  and  especially  in  officers 
of  the  army  and  navy.  Hundreds  of  clerks  of  South 
ern  birth  employed  in  the  various  departments  suddenly 
left  their  desks  and  went  South.  The  commandant  of 
the  Washington  navy-yard  and  the  quartermaster- 
general  of  the  army  resigned  their  positions  to  take 
service  under  Jefferson  Davis.  One  morning  the  cap 
tain  of  a  light  battery  on  which  General  Scott  had 
placed  special  reliance  for  the  defense  of  Washington 
came  to  the  President  at  the  White  House  to  asseverate 
and  protest  his  loyalty  and  fidelity ;  and  that  same  night 
secretly  left  his  post  and  went  to  Richmond  to  become 
a  Confederate  officer. 

The  most  prominent  case,  however,  was  that  of 
Colonel  Robert  E.  Lee,  the  officer  who  captured  John 
Brown  at  Harper's  Ferry,  and  who  afterward  became 
the  leader  of  the  Confederate  armies.  As  a  lieutenant 
he  had  served  on  the  staff  of  General  Scott  in  the  war 
with  Mexico.  Personally  knowing  his  ability,  Scott 
recommended  him  to  Lincoln  as  the  most  suitable  officer 
to  command  the  Union  army  about  to  be  assembled 
under  the  President's  call  for  seventy-five  regiments; 
and  this  command  was  informally  tendered  him 
through  a  friend.  Lee,  however,  declined  the  offer, 
explaining  that  "though  opposed  to  secession,  and 
deprecating  war,  I  could  take  no  part  in  an  invasion 
of  the  Southern  States."  He  resigned  his  commission 
in  a  letter  written  on  April  20,  and,  without  waiting  for 
notice  of  its  acceptance,  which  alone  could  discharge 
him  from  his  military  obligation,  proceeded  to  Rich 
mond,  where  he  was  formally  and  publicly  invested 
with  the  command  of  the  Virginia  military  and  naval 


THE  ANNAPOLIS   ROUTE  197 

forces  on  April  22 ;  while,  two  days  later,  the  rebel 
Vice-President,  Alexander  H.  Stephens,  and  a  commit 
tee  of  the  Richmond  convention  signed  a  formal  mili 
tary  league  making  Virginia  an  immediate  member  of 
the  Confederate  States,  and  placing  her  armies  under 
the  command  of  Jefferson  Davis. 

The  sudden  uprising  in  Maryland  and  the  insur 
rectionary  activity  in  Virginia  had  been  largely  stimu 
lated  by  the  dream  of  the  leading  conspirators  that 
their  new  confederacy  would  combine  all  the  slave 
States,  and  that  by  the  adhesion  of  both  Maryland  and 
Virginia  they  would  fall  heir  to  a  ready-made  seat  of 
government.  While  the  bombardment  of  Sumter  was 
in  progress,  the  rebel  Secretary  of  War,  announcing 
the  news  in  a  jubilant  speech  at  Montgomery,  in  the 
presence  of  Jefferson  Davis  and  his  colleagues,  confi 
dently  predicted  that  the  rebel  flag  would  before  the  end 
of  May  "float  over  the  dome  of  the  Capitol  at  Wash 
ington."  The  disloyal  demonstrations  in  Maryland 
and  Virginia  rendered  such  a  hope  so  plausible  that 
Jefferson  Davis  telegraphed  to  Governor  Letcher  at 
Richmond  that  he  was  preparing  to  send  him  thirteen 
regiments,  and  added :  "Sustain  Baltimore  if  practi 
cable.  We  reinforce  you" ;  while  Senator  Mason  hur 
ried  to  that  city  personally  to  furnish  advice  and  mil 
itary  assistance. 

But  the  flattering  expectation  was  not  realized.  The 
requisite  preparation  and  concert  of  action  were  both 
wanting.  The  Union  troops  from  New  York  and  New 
England,  pouring  into  Philadelphia,  flanked  the  Ob 
structions  of  the  Baltimore  route  by  devising  a  new 
one  by  way  of  Chesapeake  Bay  and  Annapolis;  and 
the  opportune  arrival  of  the  Seventh  Regiment  of  New 
York  in  Washington,  on  April  25,  rendered  that  city 
entirely  safe  against  surprise  or  attack,  relieved  the 


198  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

apprehension  of  officials  and  citizens,  and  renewed  its 
business  and  public  activity.  The  mob  frenzy  of  Bal 
timore  and  the  Maryland  towns  subsided  almost  as 
quickly  as  it  had  risen.  The  Union  leaders  and  news 
papers  asserted  themselves,  and  soon  demonstrated 
their  superiority  in  numbers  and  activity. 

Serious  embarrassment  had  been  created  by  the  ti 
midity  of  Governor  Hicks,  who,  while  Baltimore  re 
mained  under  mob  terrorism,  officially  protested 
against  the  landing  of  Union  troops  at  Annapolis ;  and, 
still  worse,  summoned  the  Maryland  legislature  to  meet 
on  April  26 — a  step  which  he  had  theretofore  stub 
bornly  refused  to  take.  This  event  had  become  doubly 
dangerous,  because  a  Baltimore  city  election  held  dur 
ing  the  same  terror  week  had  reinforced  the  legislature 
with  ten  secession  members,  creating  a  majority  eager 
to  pass  a  secession  ordinance  at  the  first  opportunity. 
The  question  of  either  arresting  or  dispersing  the  body 
by  military  force  was  one  of  the  problems  which  the 
crisis  forced  upon  President  Lincoln.  On  full  reflec 
tion,  he  decided  against  either  measure. 

"I  think  it  would  not  be  justifiable,"  he  wrote  to  Gen 
eral  Scott,  "nor  efficient  for  the  desired  object.  First, 
they  have  a  clearly  legal  right  to  assemble;  and  we 
cannot  know  in  advance  that  their  action  will  not  be 
lawful  and  peaceful.  And  if  we  wait  until  they  shall 
have  acted,  their  arrest  or  dispersion  will  not  lessen 
the  effect  of  their  action.  Secondly,  we  cannot  perma 
nently  prevent  their  action.  If  we  arrest  them,  we  can- 
no*t  long  hold  them  as  prisoners;  and,  when  liberated, 
they  will  immediately  reassemble  and  take  their  action. 
And  precisely  the  same  if  we  simply  disperse  them : 
they  will  immediately  reassemble  in  some  other  place. 
I  therefore  conclude  that  it  is  only  left  to  the  com 
manding  general  to  watch  and  await  their  action, 


THE   MERRYMAN    CASE  199 

which,  if  it  shall  be  to  arm  their  people  against  the 
United  States,  he  is  to  adopt  the  most  prompt  and  effi 
cient  means  to  counteract,  even  if  necessary  to  the 
bombardment  of  their  cities;  and,  in  the  extremest 
necessity,  the  suspension  of  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus/' 

Two  days  later  the  President  formally  authorized 
General  Scott  to  suspend  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus 
along  his  military  lines,  or  in  their  vicinity,  if  resistance 
should  render  it  necessary.  Arrivals  of  additional 
troops  enabled  the  General  to  strengthen  his  military 
hold  on  Annapolis  and  the  railroads;  and  on  May  13 
General  B.  F.  Butler,  with  about  one  thousand  men, 
moved  into  Baltimore  and  established  a  fortified  camp 
on  Federal  Hill,  the  bulk  of  his  force  being  the  Sixth 
Massachusetts,  which  had  been  mobbed  in  that  city 
on  April  19.  Already,  on  the  previous  day,  the  bridges 
and  railroad  had  been  repaired,  and  the  regular  transit 
of  troops  through  the  city  reestablished. 

Under  these  changing  conditions  the  secession  ma 
jority  of  the  Maryland  legislature  did  not  venture  on 
any  official  treason.  They  sent  a  committee  to  inter 
view  the  President,  vented  their  hostility  in  spiteful 
reports  and  remonstrances,  and  prolonged  their  ses 
sion  by  a  recess.  Nevertheless,  so  inveterate  was  their 
disloyalty  and  plotting  against  the  authority  of  the 
Union,  that  four  months  later  it  became  necessary  to 
place  the  leaders  under  arrest,  finally  to  head  off  their 
darling  project  of  a  Maryland  secession  ordinance. 

One  additional  incident  of  this  insurrectionary 
period  remains  to  be  noticed.  One  John  Merryman, 
claiming  to  be  a  Confederate  lieutenant,  was  arrested 
in  Baltimore  for  enlisting  men  for  the  rebellion,  and 
Chief  Justice  Taney  of  the  United  States  Supreme 
Court,  the  famous  author  of  the  Dred  Scott  decision, 
issued  a  writ  of  habeas  corpus  to  obtain  his  release  from 


200  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Fort  McHenry.  Under  the  President's  orders,  Gen 
eral  Cadwalader  of  course  declined  to  obey  the  writ. 
Upon  this,  the  chief  justice  ordered  the  general's  ar 
rest  for  contempt,  but  the  officer  sent  to  serve  the  writ 
was  refused  entrance  to  the  fort.  In  turn,  the  indig 
nant  chief  justice,  taking  counsel  of  his  passion  instead 
of  his  patriotism,  announced  dogmatically  that  "the 
President,  under  the  Constitution  and  laws  of  the 
United  States,  cannot  suspend  the  privilege  of  the  writ 
of  habeas  corpus,  nor  authorize  any  military  officer  to 
do  so" ;  and  some  weeks  afterward  filed  a  long  written 
opinion  in  support  of  this  dictum.  It  is  unnecessary 
here  to  quote  the  opinions  of  several  eminent  jurists 
who  successfully  refuted  his  labored  argument,  nor  to 
repeat  the  vigorous  analysis  with  which,  in  his  special 
message  to  Congress  of  July  4,  President  Lincoln  vin 
dicated  his  own  authority. 

While  these  events  were  occurring  in  Maryland  and 
Virginia,  the  remaining  slave  States  were  gradually 
taking  sides,  some  for,  others  against  rebellion.  Un 
der  radical  and  revolutionary  leadership  similar  to  that 
of  the  cotton  States,  the  governors  and  State  officials 
of  North  Carolina,  Tennessee,  and  Arkansas  placed 
their  States  in  an  attitude  of  insurrection,  and  before 
the  middle  of  May  practically  joined  them  to  the  Con 
federate  government  by  the  formalities  of  military 
leagues  and  secession  ordinances. 

But  in  the  border  slave  States — that  is,  those  contig 
uous  to  the  free  States — the  eventual  result  was  differ 
ent.  In  these,  though  secession  intrigue  and  sympathy 
were  strong,  and  though  their  governors  and  State 
officials  favored  the  rebellion,  the  underlying  loyalty 
and  Unionism  of  the  people  thwarted  their  revolu 
tionary  schemes.  This  happened  even  in  the  north 
western  part  of  Virginia  itself.  The  forty-eight  coun- 


KENTUCKY  201 

ties  of  that  State  lying  north  of  the  Alleghanies  and 
adjoining  Pennsylvania  and  Ohio  repudiated  the  ac 
tion  at  Richmond,  seceded  from  secession,  and  estab 
lished  a  loyal  provisional  State  government.  President 
Lincoln  recognized  them  and  sustained  them  with  mil 
itary  aid;  and  in  due  time  they  became  organized  and 
admitted  to  the  Union  as  the  State  of  West  Virginia. 
In  Delaware,  though  some  degree  of  secession  feeling 
existed,  it  was  too  insignificant  to  produce  any  note 
worthy  public  demonstration. 

In  Kentucky  the  political  struggle  was  deep  and  pro 
longed.  The  governor  twice  called  the  legislature  to 
gether  to  initiate  secession  proceedings;  but  that  body 
refused  compliance,  and  warded  off  his  scheme  by  vot 
ing  to  maintain  the  State  neutrality.  Next,  the  gov 
ernor  sought  to  utilize  the  military  organization  known 
as  the  State  Guard  to  effect  his  object.  The  Union 
leaders  offset  this  movement  by  enlisting  several  volun 
teer  Union  regiments.  At  the  June  election  nine 
Union  congressmen  were  chosen,  and  only  one  seces 
sionist;  while  in  August  a  new  legislature  was  elected 
with  a  three-fourths  Union  majority  in  each  branch. 
Other  secession  intrigues  proved  equally  abortive;  and 
when,  finally,  in  September,  Confederate  armies  in 
vaded  Kentucky  at  three  different  points,  the  Kentucky 
legislature  invited  the  Union  armies  of  the  West  into 
the  State  to  expel  them,  and  voted  to  place  forty  thou 
sand  Union  volunteers  at  the  service  of  President 
Lincoln. 

In  Missouri  the  struggle  was  more  fierce,  but  also 
more  brief.  As  far  back  as  January,  the  conspirators 
had  perfected  a  scheme  to  obtain  possession,  through 
the  treachery  of  the  officer  in  charge,  of  the  important 
Jefferson  Barracks  arsenal  at  St.  Louis,  with  its  store 
of  sixty  thousand  stand  of  arms  and  a  million  and  a 


202  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

half  cartridges.  The  project,  however,  failed.  Rumors 
of  the  danger  came  to  General  Scott,  who  ordered 
thither  a  company  of  regulars  under  command  of  Cap 
tain  Nathaniel  Lyon,  an  officer  not  only  loyal  by  nature 
and  habit,  but  also  imbued  with  strong  antislavery 
convictions.  Lyon  found  valuable  support  in  the 
watchfulness  of  a  Union  Safety  Committee  composed 
of  leading  St.  Louis  citizens,  who  secretly  organized 
a  number  of  Union  regiments  recruited  largely  from 
the  heavy  German  population;  and  from  these  sources 
Lyon  was  enabled  to  make  such  a  show  of  available 
military  force  as  effectively  to  deter  any  mere  popular 
uprising  to  seize  the  arsenal. 

A  State  convention,  elected  to  pass  a  secession  ordi 
nance,  resulted,  unexpectedly  to  the  conspirators,  in  the 
return  of  a  majority  of  Union  delegates,  who  voted 
down  the  secession  program  and  adjourned  to  the  fol 
lowing  December.  Thereupon,  the  secession  governor 
ordered  his  State  militia  into  temporary  camps  of  in 
struction,  with  the  idea  of  taking  Missouri  out  of  the 
Union  by  a  concerted  military  movement.  One  of 
these  encampments,  established  at  St.  Louis  and  named 
Camp  Jackson  in  honor  of  the  governor,  furnished 
such  unquestionable  evidences  of  intended  treason  that 
Captain  Lyon,  whom  President  Lincoln  had  meanwhile 
authorized  to  enlist  ten  thousand  Union  volunteers,  and, 
if  necessary,  to  proclaim  martial  law,  made  a  sudden 
march  upon  Camp  Jackson  with  his  regulars  and  six 
of  his  newly  enlisted  regiments,  stationed  his  force  in 
commanding  positions  around  the  camp,  and  demanded 
its  surrender.  The  demand  was  complied  with  after 
but  slight  hesitation,  and  the  captured  militia  regiments 
were,  on  the  following  day,  disbanded  under  parole. 
Unfortunately,  as  the  prisoners  were  being  marched 
away  a  secession  mob  insulted  and  attacked  some  of 


MISSOURI  203 

Lyon's  regiments  and  provoked  a  return  fire,  in  which 
about  twenty  persons,  mainly  lookers-on,  were  killed 
or  wounded ;  and  for  a  day  or  two  the  city  was  thrown 
into  the  panic  and  lawlessness  of  a  reign  of  terror. 

Upon  this,  the  legislature,  in  session  at  Jefferson 
City,  the  capital  of  the  State,  with  a  three-fourths  seces 
sion  majority,  rushed  through  the  forms  of  legislation 
a  military  bill  placing  the  military  and  financial  re 
sources  of  Missouri  under  the  governor's  control.  For 
a  month  longer  various  incidents  delayed  the  culmina 
tion  of  the  approaching  struggle,  each  side  continuing 
its  preparations,  and  constantly  accentuating  the  rising 
antagonism.  The  crisis  came  when,  on  June  u,  Gov 
ernor  Jackson  and  Captain  Lyon,  now  made  brigadier- 
general  by  the  President,  met  in  an  interview  at  St. 
Louis.  In  this  interview  the  governor  demanded  that 
he  be  permitted  to  exercise  sole  military  command  to 
maintain  the  neutrality  of  Missouri,  while  Lyon  in 
sisted  that  the  Federal  military  authority  must  be  left 
in  unrestricted  control.  It  being  impossible  to  reach 
any  agreement,  Governor  Jackson  hurried  back  to  his 
capital,  burning  railroad  bridges  behind  him  as  he 
went,  and  on  the  following  day,  June  12,  issued  his 
proclamation  calling  out  fifty  thousand  State  militia, 
and  denouncing  the  Lincoln  administration  as  "an 
unconstitutional  military  despotism." 

Lyon  was  also  prepared  for  this  contingency.  On 
the  afternoon  of  June  13,  he  embarked  with  a  regular 
battery  and  several  battalions  of  his  Union  volunteers 
on  steamboats,  moved  rapidly  up  the  Missouri  River 
to  Jefferson  City,  drove  the  governor  and  the  secession 
legislature  into  precipitate  flight,  took  possession  of 
the  capital,  and,  continuing  his  expedition,  scattered, 
after  a  slight  skirmish,  a  small  rebel  military  force 
which  had  hastily  collected  at  Boonville.  Rapidly  fol- 


204  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

lowing  these  events,  the  loyal  members  of  the  Missouri 
State  convention,  which  had  in  February  refused  to 
pass  a  secession  ordinance,  were  called  together,  and 
passed  ordinances  under  which  was  constituted  a  loyal 
State  government  that  maintained  the  local  civil 
authority  of  the  United  States  throughout  the  greater 
part  of  Missouri  during  the  whole  of  the  Civil  War, 
only  temporarily  interrupted  by  invasions  of  transient 
Confederate  armies  from  Arkansas. 

It  will  be  seen  from  the  foregoing  outline  that  the 
original  hope  of  the  Southern  leaders  to  make  the  Ohio 
River  the  northern  boundary  of  their  slave  empire  was 
not  realized.  They  indeed  secured  the  adhesion  of 
Virginia,  North  Carolina,  Tennessee,  and  Arkansas, 
by  which  the  territory  of  the  Confederate  States  gov 
ernment  was  enlarged  nearly  one  third  and  its  popula 
tion  and  resources  nearly  doubled.  But  the  northern 
tier  of  slave  States — Maryland,  West  Virginia,  Ken 
tucky,  and  Missouri — not  only  decidedly  refused  to 
join  the  rebellion,  but  remained  true  to  the  Union ;  and 
this  reduced  the  contest  to  a  trial  of  military  strength 
between  eleven  States  with  5,115,790  whites,  and 
3,508,131  slaves,  against  twenty- four  States  with 
21,611,422  whites  and  342,212  slaves,  and  at  least  a 
proportionate  difference  in  all  other  resources  of  war. 
At  the  very  outset  the  conditions  were  prophetic  of  the 
result. 


XV 


Davis's  Proclamation  for  Privateers — Lincoln's  Procla 
mation  of  Blockade — The  Call  for  Three  Years'  Volun 
teers — Southern  Military  Preparations — Rebel  Capital 
Moved  to  Richmond — Virginia,  North  Carolina,  Ten 
nessee,  and  Arkansas  Admitted  to  Confederate  States 
— Desertion  of  Army  and  Navy  Officers — Union  Troops 
Fortify  Virginia  Shore  of  the  Potomac — Concentration 
at  Harper's  Ferry — Concentration  at  Fortress  Monroe 
and  Cairo — English  Neutrality — Seward's  2ist-of-May 
Despatch — Lincoln's  Corrections — Preliminary  Skir 
mishes — Forward  to  Richmond — Plan  of  McDowell's 
Campaign 

FROM  the  slower  political  developments  in  the  bor 
der  slave  States  we  must  return  and  follow  up  the 
primary  hostilities  of  the  rebellion.  The  bombardment 
of  Sumter,  President  Lincoln's  call  for  troops,  the 
Baltimore  riot,  the  burning  of  Harper's  Ferry  armory 
and  Norfolk  navy-yard,  and  the  interruption  of  rail 
road  communication  which,  for  nearly  a  week,  isolated 
the  capital  and  threatened  it  with  siege  and  possible 
capture,  fully  demonstrated  the  beginning  of  serious 
civil  war. 

Jefferson  Davis's  proclamation,  on  April  17,  of  inten 
tion  to  issue  letters  of  marque,  was  met  two  days  later 
by  President  Lincoln's  counter-proclamation  instituting 
a  blockade  of  the  Southern  ports,  and  declaring  that 
privateers  would  be  held  amenable  to  the  laws  against 
piracy.  His  first  call  for  seventy-five  thousand  three 

205 


2o6  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

months'  militia  was  dictated  as  to  numbers  by  the  sud 
den  emergency,  and  as  to  form  and  term  of  service  by 
the  provisions  of  the  Act  of  1795.  It  needed  only  a 
few  days  to  show  that  this  form  of  enlistment  was  both 
cumbrous  and  inadequate;  and  the  creation  of  a  more 
powerful  army  was  almost  immediately  begun.  On 
May  3  a  new  proclamation  was  issued,  calling  into  ser 
vice  42,034  three  years'  volunteers,  22,714  enlisted 
men  to  add  ten  regiments  to  the  regular  army,  and 
18,000  seamen  for  blockade  service:  a  total  immediate 
increase  of  82,748,  swelling  the  entire  military  estab 
lishment  to  an  army  of  156,861  and  a  navy  of  25,000. 

No  express  authority  of  law  yet  existed  for  these 
measures;  but  President  Lincoln  took  the  respon 
sibility  of  ordering  them,  trusting  that  Congress 
would  legalize  his  acts.  His  confidence  was  entirely 
justified.  At  the  special  session  which  met  under  his 
proclamation,  on  the  fourth  of  July,  these  acts  were 
declared  valid,  and  he  was  authorized,  moreover,  to 
raise  an  army  of  a  million  men  and  $250,000,000  in 
money  to  carry  on  the  war  to  suppress  the  rebellion; 
while  other  legislation  conferred  upon  him  supplemen 
tary  authority  to  meet  the  emergency. 

Meanwhile,  the  first  effort  of  the  governors  of  the 
loyal  States  was  to  furnish  their  quotas  under  the  first 
call  for  militia.  This  was  easy  enough  as  to  men.  It 
required  only  a  few  days  to  fill  the  regiments  and  for 
ward  them  to  the  State  capitals  and  principal  cities ;  but 
to  arm  and  equip  them  for  the  field  on  the  spur  of  the 
moment  was  a  difficult  task  which  involved  much  con 
fusion  and  delay,  even  though  existing  armories  and 
foundries  pushed  their  work  to  the  utmost  and  new 
ones  were  established.  Under  the  militia  call,  the  gov 
ernors  appointed  all  the  officers  required  by  their  re 
spective  quotas,  from  company  lieutenant  to  major- 


REBEL    WAR    PREPARATIONS        207 

general  of  division ;  while  under  the  new  call  for  three 
years'  volunteers,  their  authority  was  limited  to  the 
simple  organization  of  regiments. 

In  the  South,  war  preparation  also  immediately  be 
came  active.  All  the  indications  are  that  up  to  their 
attack  on  Sumter,  the  Southern  leaders  hoped  to  effect 
separation  through  concession  and  compromise  by  the 
North.  That  hope,  of  course,  disappeared  with  South 
Carolina's  opening  guns,  and  the  Confederate  gov 
ernment  made  what  haste  it  could  to  meet  the  ordeal 
it  dreaded  even  while  it  had  provoked  it.  The  rebel 
Congress  was  hastily  called  together,  and  passed  acts 
recognizing  war  and  regulating  privateering;  admit 
ting  Virginia,  North  Carolina,  Tennessee,  and  Ar 
kansas  to  the  Confederate  States;  authorizing  a 
$50,000,000  loan ;  practically  confiscating  debts  due 
from  Southern  to  Northern  citizens ;  and  removing  the 
seat  of  government  from  Montgomery,  Alabama,  to 
Richmond,  Virginia. 

Four  different  calls  for  Southern  volunteers  had 
been  made,  aggregating  82,000  men;  and  Jefferson 
Davis's  message  now  proposed  to  further  organize  and 
hold  in  readiness  an  army  of  100,000.  The  work  of 
erecting  forts  and  batteries  for  defense  was  being  rap 
idly  pushed  at  all  points :  on  the  Atlantic  coast,  on  the 
Potomac,  and  on  the  Mississippi  and  other  Western 
streams.  For  the  present  the  Confederates  were  well 
supplied  with  cannon  and  small  arms  from  the  cap 
tured  navy-yards  at  Norfolk  and  Pensacola  and  the 
six  or  eight  arsenals  located  in  the  South.  The  mar 
tial  spirit  of  their  people  was  roused  to  the  highest 
enthusiasm,  and  there  was  no  lack  of  volunteers  to 
fill  the  companies  and  regiments  which  the  Confed 
erate  legislators  authorized  Davis  to  accept,  either  by 
regular  calls  on  State  executives  in  accordance  with, 


208  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

or  singly  in  defiance  of,  their  central  dogma  of  States 
Rights,  as  he  might  prefer. 

The  secession  of  the  Southern  States  not  only 
strengthened  the  rebellion  with  the  arms  and  supplies 
stored  in  the  various  military  and  naval  depots  within 
their  limits,  and  the  fortifications  erected  for  their 
defense :  what  was  of  yet  greater  help  to  the  revolt, 
a  considerable  portion  of  the  officers  of  the  army  and 
navy — perhaps  one  third — abandoned  the  allegiance 
which  they  had  sworn  to  the  United  States,  and,  under 
the  false  doctrine  of  State  supremacy  taught  by  South 
ern  leaders,  gave  their  professional  skill  and  experience 
to  the  destruction  of  the  government  which  had  edu 
cated  and  honored  them.  The  defection  of  Robert 
E.  Lee  was  a  conspicuous  example,  and  his  loss  to  the 
Union  and  service  to  the  rebel  army  cannot  easily  be 
measured.  So,  also,  were  the  similar  cases  of  Ad 
jutant-General  Cooper  and  Quartermaster-General 
Johnston.  In  gratifying  contrast  stands  the  steadfast 
loyalty  and  devotion  of  Lieutenant-General  Winfield 
Scott,  who,  though  he  was  a  Virginian  and  loved  his 
native  State,  never  wavered  an  instant  in  his  allegiance 
to  the  flag  he  had  heroically  followed  in  the  War  of 
1812,  and  triumphantly  planted  over  the  capital  of 
Mexico  in  1847.  Though  unable  to  take  the  field,  he 
as  general-in-chief  directed  the  assembling  and  first 
movements  of  the  Union  troops. 

The  largest  part  of  the  three  months'  regiments  were 
ordered  to  Washington  city  as  the  most  important 
position  in  a  political,  and  most  exposed  in  a  military 
point  of  view.  The  great  machine  of  war,  once  started, 
moved,  as  it  always  does,  by  its  own  inherent  energy 
from  arming  to  concentration,  from  concentration  to 
skirmish  and  battle.  It  was  not  long  before  Wash 
ington  was  a  military  camp.  Gradually  the  hesita- 


HARPER'S   FERRY  209 

tion  to  "invade"  the  "sacred  soil"  of  the  South  faded 
out  under  the  stern  necessity  to  forestall  an  invasion 
of  the  equally  sacred  soil  of  the  North ;  and  on  May 
24  the  Union  regiments  in  Washington  crossed  the 
Potomac  and  planted  themselves  in  a  great  semicircle 
of  formidable  earthworks  eighteen  miles  long  on  the 
Virginia  shore,  from  Chain  Bridge  to  Hunting  Creek, 
below  Alexandria. 

Meanwhile,  a  secondary  concentration  of  force  de 
veloped  itself  at  Harper's  Ferry,  forty-nine  miles  north 
west  of  Washington.  When,  on  April  20,  a  Union 
detachment  had  burned  and  abandoned  the  armory  at 
that  point,  it  was  at  once  occupied  by  a  handful  of  rebel 
militia;  and  immediately  thereafter  Jefferson  Davis 
had  hurried  his  regiments  thither  to  "sustain"  or  over 
awe  Baltimore;  and  when  that  prospect  failed,  it  be 
came  a  rebel  camp  of  instruction.  Afterward,  as 
Major-General  Patterson  collected  his  Pennsylvania 
quota,  he  turned  it  toward  that  point  as  a  probable 
field  of  operations.  As  a  mere  town,  Harper's  Ferry 
was  unimportant ;  but,  lying  on  the  Potomac,  and  being 
at  the  head  of  the  great  Shenandoah  valley,  down 
which  not  only  a  good  turnpike,  but  also  an  effective 
railroad  ran  southeastward  to  the  very  heart  of  the 
Confederacy,  it  was,  and  remained  through  the  entire 
war,  a  strategical  line  of  the  first  importance,  protected, 
as  the  Shenandoah  valley  was,  by  the  main  chain  of  the 
Alleghanies  on  the  west  and  the  Blue  Ridge  on  the 
east. 

A  part  of  the  eastern  quotas  had  also  been  hurried 
to  Fortress  Monroe,  Virginia,  lying  at  the  mouth  of 
Chesapeake  Bay,  which  became  and  continued  an  im 
portant  base  for  naval  as  well  as  military  operations. 
In  the  West,  even  more  important  than  St.  Louis  was 
the  little  town  of  Cairo,  lying  at  the  extreme  southern 

14 


210  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

end  of  the  State  of  Illinois,  at  the  confluence  of  the 
Ohio  River  with  the  Mississippi.  Commanding,  as  it 
did,  thousands  of  miles  of  river  navigation  in  three 
different  directions,  and  being  also  the  southernmost 
point  of  the  earliest  military  frontier,  it  had  been  the 
first  care  of  General  Scott  to  occupy  it;  and,  indeed, 
it  proved  itself  to  be  the  military  key  of  the  whole 
Mississippi  valley. 

It  was  not  an  easy  thing  promptly  to  develop  a  mil 
itary  policy  for  the  suppression  of  the  rebellion.  The 
so-called  Confederate  States  of  America  covered  a  mil 
itary  field  having  more  than  six  times  the  area  of 
Great  Britain,  with  a  coast-line  of  over  thirty-five 
hundred  miles,  and  an  interior  frontier  of  over  seven 
thousand  miles.  Much  less  was  it  possible  promptly  to 
plan  and  set  on  foot  concise  military  campaigns  to  re 
duce  the  insurgent  States  to  allegiance.  Even  the  great 
military  genius  of  General  Scott  was  unable  to  do  more 
than  suggest  a  vague  outline  for  the  work.  The  prob 
lem  was  not  only  too  vast,  but  as  yet  too  indefinite, 
since  the  political  future  of  West  Virginia,  Kentucky, 
and  Missouri  still  hung  in  more  or  less  uncertainty. 

The  passive  and  negligent  attitude  which  the  Bu 
chanan  administration  had  maintained  toward  the  in 
surrection  during  the  whole  three  months  between  the 
presidential  election  and  Mr.  Lincoln's  inauguration, 
gave  the  rebellion  an  immense  advantage  in  the  courts 
and  cabinets  of  Europe.  Until  within  three  days  of  the 
end  of  Buchanan's  term  not  a  word  of  protest  or  even 
explanation  was  sent  to  counteract  the  impression  that 
disunion  was  likely  to  become  permanent.  Indeed,  the 
non-coercion  doctrine  of  Buchanan's  message  was,  in 
the  eyes  of  European  statesmen,  equivalent  to  an 
acknowledgment  of  such  a  result;  and  the  formation 
of  the  Confederate  government,  followed  so  quickly 


ENGLISH    NEUTRALITY  211 

by  the  fall  of  Fort  Sumter,  seemed  to  them  a  practical 
realization  of  their  forecast.  The  course  of  events 
appeared  not  merely  to  fulfil  their  expectations,  but 
also,  in  the  case  of  England  and  France,  gratified  their 
eager  hopes.  To  England  it  promised  cheap  cotton 
and  free  trade  with  the  South.  To  France  it  appeared 
to  open  the  way  for  colonial  ambitions  which  Napoleon 
III  so  soon  set  on  foot  on  an  imperial  scale. 

Before  Charles  Francis  Adams,  whom  President 
Lincoln  appointed  as  the  new  minister  to  England,  ar 
rived  in  London  and  obtained  an  interview  with  Lord 
John  Russell,  Mr.  Seward  had  already  received  several 
items  of  disagreeable  news.  One  was  that,  prior  to  his 
arrival,  the  Queen's  proclamation  of  neutrality  had 
been  published,  practically  raising  the  Confederate 
States  to  the  rank  of  a  belligerent  power,  and,  before 
they  had  a  single  privateer  afloat,  giving  these  an 
equality  in  British  ports  with  United  States  ships  of 
war.  Another  was  that  an  understanding  had  been 
reached  between  England  and  France  which  would 
lead  both  governments  to  take  the  same  course  as  to 
recognition,  whatever  that  course  might  be.  Third, 
that  three  diplomatic  agents  of  the  Confederate  States 
were  in  London,  whom  the  British  minister  had  not 
yet  seen,  but  whom  he  had  caused  to  be  informed  that 
he  was  not  unwilling  to  see  unofficially. 

Under  the  irritation  produced  by  this  hasty  and 
equivocal  action  of  the  British  government,  Mr.  Sew 
ard  wrote  a  despatch  to  Mr.  Adams  under  date  of  May 
21,  which,  had  it  been  sent  in  the  form  of  the  original 
draft,  would  scarcely  have  failed  to  lead  to  war  be 
tween  the  two  nations.  While  it  justly  set  forth  with 
emphasis  and  courage  what  the  government  of  the 
United  States  would  endure  and  what  it  would  not 
endure  from  foreign  powers  during  the  Southern  in- 


212  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

surrection,  its  phraseology,  written  in  a  heat  of  indig 
nation,  was  so  blunt  and  exasperating  as  to  imply 
intentional  disrespect. 

When  Mr.  Seward  read  the  document  to  President 
Lincoln,  the  latter  at  once  perceived  its  objectionable 
tone,  and  retained  it  for  further  reflection.  A  second 
reading  confirmed  his  first  impression.  Thereupon, 
taking  his  pen,  the  frontier  lawyer,  in  a  careful  revi 
sion  of  the  whole  despatch,  so  amended  and  changed 
the  work  of  the  trained  and  experienced  statesman, 
as  entirely  to  eliminate  its  offensive  crudeness,  and 
bring  it  within  all  the  dignity  and  reserve  of  the  most 
studied  diplomatic  courtesy.  If,  after  Mr.  Seward's 
remarkable  memorandum  of  April  i,  the  Secretary  of 
State  had  needed  any  further  experience  to  convince 
him  of  the  President's  mastery  in  both  administrative 
and  diplomatic  judgment,  this  second  incident  afforded 
him  the  full  evidence. 

No  previous  President  ever  had  such  a  sudden  in 
crease  of  official  work  devolve  upon  him  as  President 
Lincoln  during  the  early  months  of  his  administration. 
The  radical  change  of  parties  through  which  he  was 
elected  not  only  literally  filled  the  White  House  with 
applicants  for  office,  but  practically  compelled  a  whole 
sale  substitution  of  new  appointees  for  the  old,  to  rep 
resent  the  new  thought  and  will  of  the  nation.  The 
task  of  selecting  these  was  greatly  complicated  by  the 
sharp  competition  between  the  heterogeneous  elements 
of  which  the  Republican  party  was  composed.  This 
work  was  not  half  completed  when  the  Sumter  bom 
bardment  initiated  active  rebellion,  and  precipitated 
the  new  difficulty  of  sifting  the  loyal  from  the  disloyal, 
and  the  yet  more  pressing  labor  of  scrutinizing  the  or 
ganization  of  the  immense  new  volunteer  army  called 
into  service  by  the  proclamation  of  May  3.  Mr.  Lin- 


THE  PRESIDENT'S  LABORS  213 

coin  used  often  to  say  at  this  period,  when  besieged  by 
claims  to  appointment,  that  he  felt  like  a  man  letting 
rooms  at  one  end  of  his  house,  while  the  other  end  was 
on  fire.  In  addition  to  this  merely  routine  work  was 
the  much  more  delicate  and  serious  duty  of  deciding 
the  hundreds  of  novel  questions  affecting  the  consti 
tutional  principles  and  theories  of  administration. 

The  great  departments  of  government,  especially 
those  of  war  and  navy,  could  not  immediately  expedite 
either  the  supervision  or  clerical  details  of  this  sudden 
expansion,  and  almost  every  case  of  resulting  confusion 
and  delay  was  brought  by  impatient  governors  and 
State  officials  to  the  President  for  complaint  and  cor 
rection.  Volunteers  were  coming  rapidly  enough  to 
the  various  rendezvous  in  the  different  States,  but 
where  were  the  rations  to  feed  them,  money  to  pay 
them,  tents  to  shelter  them,  uniforms  to  clothe  them, 
rifles  to  arm  them,  officers  to  drill  and  instruct  them, 
or  transportation  to  carry  them?  In  this  carnival  of 
patriotism,  this  hurly-burly  of  organization,  the  weak 
nesses  as  well  as  the  virtues  of  human  nature  quickly 
developed  themselves,  and  there  was  manifest  not  only 
the  inevitable  friction  of  personal  rivalry,  but  also  the 
disturbing  and  baneful  effects  of  occasional  falsehood 
and  dishonesty,  which  could  not  always  be  immedi 
ately  traced  to  the  responsible  culprit.  It  happened 
in  many  instances  that  there  were  alarming  discrepan 
cies  between  the  full  paper  regiments  and  brigades  re 
ported  as  ready  to  start  from  State  capitals,  and  the 
actual  number  of  recruits  that  railroad  trains  brought 
to  the  Washington  camps;  and  Mr.  Lincoln  several 
times  ironically  compared  the  process  to  that  of  a  man 
trying  to  shovel  a  bushel  of  fleas  across  a  barn  floor. 

While  the  month  of  May  insensibly  slipped  away 
amid  these  preparatory  vexations,  camps  of  instruction 


214  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

rapidly  grew  to  small  armies  at  a  few  principal  points, 
even  under  such  incidental  delay  and  loss;  and  during 
June  the  confronting  Union  and  Confederate  forces  be 
gan  to  produce  the  conflicts  and  casualties  of  earnest 
war.  As  yet  they  were  both  few  and  unimportant : 
the  assassination  of  Ellsworth  when  Alexandria  was 
occupied;  a  slight  cavalry  skirmish  at  Fairfax  Court 
House;  the  rout  of  a  Confederate  regiment  at  Phi- 
lippi,  West  Virginia ;  the  blundering  leadership  through 
which  two  Union  detachments  fired  upon  each  other 
in  the  dark  at  Big  Bethel,  Virginia;  the  ambush 
of  a  Union  railroad  train  at  Vienna  Station;  and 
Lyon's  skirmish,  which  scattered  the  first  collection 
of  rebels  at  Boonville,  Missouri.  Comparatively  speak 
ing,  all  these  were  trivial  in  numbers  of  dead  and 
wounded — the  first  few  drops  of  blood  before  the 
heavy  sanguinary  showers  the  future  was  destined  to 
bring.  But  the  effect  upon  the  public  was  irritating 
and  painful  to  a  degree  entirely  out  of  proportion  to 
their  real  extent  and  gravity. 

The  relative  loss  and  gain  in  these  affairs  was  not 
greatly  unequal.  The  victories  of  Philippi  and  Boon 
ville  easily  offset  the  disasters  of  Big  Bethel  and 
Vienna.  But  the  public  mind  was  not  yet  schooled  to 
patience  and  to  the  fluctuating  chances  of  war.  The 
newspapers  demanded  prompt  progress  and  ample  vic 
tory,  as  imperatively  as  they  were  wont  to  demand 
party  triumph  in  politics  or  achievement  in  commer 
cial  enterprise.  "Forward  to  Richmond,"  repeated  the 
"New  York  Tribune,"  day  after  day,  and  many  sheets 
of  lesser  note  and  influence  echoed  the  cry.  There 
seemed,  indeed,  a  certain  reason  for  this  clamor,  be 
cause  the  period  of  enlistment  of  the  three  months' 
regiments  was  already  two  thirds  gone,  and  they  were 
not  yet  all  armed  and  equipped  for  field  service. 


THE   REBEL   POSITION  215 

President  Lincoln  was  fully  alive  to  the  need  of 
meeting  this  popular  demand.  The  special  session  of 
Congress  was  soon  to  begin,  and  to  it  the  new  adminis 
tration  must  look,  not  only  to  ratify  what  had  been  done, 
but  to  authorize  a  large  increase  of  the  military  force, 
and  heavy  loans  for  coming  expenses  of  the  war.  On 
June  29,  therefore,  he  called  his  cabinet  and  principal 
military  officers  to  a  council  of  war  at  the  Executive 
Mansion,  to  discuss  a  more  formidable  campaign  than 
had  yet  been  planned.  General  Scott  was  opposed  to 
such  an  undertaking  at  that  time.  He  preferred  wait 
ing  until  autumn,  meanwhile  organizing  and  drilling 
a  large  army,  with  which  to  move  down  the  Missis 
sippi  and  end  the  war  with  a  final  battle  at  New 
Orleans.  Aside  from  the  obvious  military  objections 
to  this  course,  such  a  procrastination,  in  the  present 
irritation  of  the  public  temper,  was  not  to  be  thought 
of;  and  the  old  general  gracefully  waived  his  pref 
erence  and  contributed  his  best  judgment  to  the 
perfecting  of  an  immediate  campaign  into  Virginia. 

The  Confederate  forces  in  Virginia  had  been  gath 
ered  by  the  orders  of  General  Lee  into  a  defensive  posi 
tion  at  Manassas  Junction,  where  a  railroad  from  Rich 
mond  and  another  from  Harper's  Ferry  come  together. 
Here  General  Beauregard,  who  had  organized  and  con 
ducted  the  Sumter  bombardment,  had  command  of  a 
total  of  about  twenty-five  thousand  men  which  he  was 
drilling.  The  Junction  was  fortified  with  some  slight 
field-works  and  fifteen  heavy  guns,  supported  by  a  gar 
rison  of  two  thousand ;  while  the  main  body  was 
camped  in  a  line  of  seven  miles'  length  behind  Bull  Run, 
a  winding,  sluggish  stream  flowing  southeasterly  tow 
ard  the  Potomac.  The  distance  was  about  thirty-two 
miles  southwest  of  Washington.  Another  Confeder 
ate  force  of  about  ten  thousand,  under  General  J.  E. 


216  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Johnston,  was  collected  at  Winchester  and  Harper's 
Ferry  on  the  Potomac,  to  guard  the  entrance  to  the 
Shenandoah  valley;  and  an  understanding  existed  be 
tween  Johnston  and  Beauregard,  that  in  case  either 
were  attacked,  the  other  would  come  to  his  aid  by  the 
quick  railroad  transportation  between  the  two  places. 

The  new  Union  plan  contemplated  that  Brigadier- 
General  McDowell  should  march  from  Washington 
against  Manassas  and  Bull  Run,  with  a  force  sufficient 
to  beat  Beauregard,  while  General  Patterson,  who  had 
concentrated  the  bulk  of  the  Pennsylvania  regiments 
in  the  neighborhood  of  Harper's  Ferry,  in  numbers 
nearly  or  quite  double  that  of  his  antagonist,  should 
move  against  Johnston,  and  either  fight  or  hold  him 
so  that  he  could  not  come  to  the  aid  of  Beauregard. 
At  the  council  McDowell  emphasized  the  danger  of 
such  a  junction;  but  General  Scott  assured  him:  "If 
Johnston  joins  Beauregard,  he  shall  have  Patterson 
on  his  heels."  With  this  understanding,  McDowell's 
movement  was  ordered  to  begin  on  July  9. 


XVI 


Congress  —  The  President's  Message  —  Men  and  Money 
Voted  —  The  Contraband  —  Dennison  Appoints  McClcl- 
lan  —  Rich  Mountain  —  McDowell  —  Bull  Run  —  Patter 
son's  Failure  —  McClellan  at  Washington 


these  preparations  for  a  Virginia  earn 
paign  were  going  on,  another  campaign  was 
also  slowly  shaping  itself  in  Western  Virginia;  but  be 
fore  either  of  them  reached  any  decisive  results  the 
Thirty-seventh  Congress,  chosen  at  the  presidential 
election  of  1860,  met  in  special  session  on  the  fourth  of 
July,  1  86  1,  in  pursuance  of  the  President's  proclama 
tion  of  April  15.  There  being  no  members  present  in 
either  branch  from  the  seceded  States,  the  number  in 
each  house  was  reduced  nearly  one  third.  A  great 
change  in  party  feeling  was  also  manifest.  No  more 
rampant  secession  speeches  wrere  to  be  heard.  Of  the 
rare  instances  of  men  who  were  yet  to  join  the  rebel 
lion,  ex-Vice-President  Breckinridge  was  the  most  con 
spicuous  example;  and  their  presence  was  offset  by 
prominent  Southern  Unionists  like  Andrew  Johnson 
of  Tennessee,  and  John  J.  Crittenden  of  Kentucky. 
The  heated  antagonisms  which  had  divided  the  pre 
vious  Congress  into  four  clearly  defined  factions  were 
so  far  restrained  or  obliterated  by  the  events  of  the 
past  four  months,  as  to  leave  but  a  feeble  opposition 
to  the  Republican  majority  now  dominant  in  both 
branches,  which  \vas  itself  rendered  moderate  and  pru 
dent  by  the  new  conditions. 

217 


218  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

The  message  of  President  Lincoln  was  temperate 
in  spirit,  but  positive  and  strong  in  argument.  Recit 
ing  the  secession  and  rebellion  of  the  Confederate 
States,  and  their  unprovoked  assault  on  Fort  Surnter, 
he  continued : 

"Having  said  to  them  in  the  inaugural  address,  'You 
can  have  no  conflict  without  being  yourselves  the  ag 
gressors/  he  took  pains  not  only  to  keep  this  declaration 
good,  but  also  to  keep  the  case  so  free  from  the  power 
of  ingenious  sophistry  that  the  world  should  not  be  able 
to  misunderstand  it.  By  the  affair  at  Fort  Sumter, 
with  its  surrounding  circumstances,  that  point  was 
reached.  Then  and  thereby  the  assailants  of  the  gov 
ernment  began  the  conflict  of  arms,  without  a  gun  in 
sight  or  in  expectancy  to  return  their  fire,  save  only 
the  few  in  the  fort  sent  to  that  harbor  years  before  for 
their  own  protection,  and  still  ready  to  give  that  pro 
tection  in  whatever  was  lawful.  .  .  .  This  issue 
embraces  more  than  the  fate  of  these  United  States. 
It  presents  to  the  whole  family  of  man  the  question 
whether  a  constitutional  republic  or  democracy — a  gov 
ernment  of  the  people  by  the  same  people — can  or  can 
not  maintain  its  territorial  integrity  against  its  own 
domestic  foes." 

With  his  singular  felicity  of  statement,  he  analyzed 
and  refuted  the  sophism  that  secession  was  lawful  and 
constitutional. 

"This  sophism  derives  much,  perhaps  the  whole,  of 
its  currency  from  the  assumption  that  there  is  some 
omnipotent  and  sacred  supremacy  pertaining  to  a  State 
—to  each  State  of  our  Federal  Union.  Our  States 
have  neither  more  nor  less  power  than  that  reserved 
to  them  in  the  Union  by  the  Constitution — no  one  of 
them  ever  having  been  a  State  out  of  the  Union.  .  .  . 
The  States  have  their  status  in  the  Union,  and  they  have 


THE  PRESIDENT'S  MESSAGE         219 

no  other  legal  status.  If  they  break  from  this,  they  can 
only  do  so  against  law  and  by  revolution.  The  Union, 
and  not  themselves  separately,  procured  their  inde 
pendence  and  their  liberty.  By  conquest  or  purchase 
the  Union  gave  each  of  them  whatever  of  independence 
or  liberty  it  has.  The  Union  is  older  than  any  of  the 
States,  and,  in  fact,  it  created  them  as  States.  Origi 
nally  some  dependent  colonies  made  the  Union,  and,  in 
turn,  the  Union  threw  off  their  old  dependence  for 
them,  and  made  them  States,  such  as  they  are.  Not  one 
of  them  ever  had  a  State  constitution  independent  of 
the  Union." 

A  noteworthy  point  in  the  message  is  President 
Lincoln's  expression  of  his  abiding  confidence  in  the  in 
telligence  and  virtue  of  the  people  of  the  United  States. 

"It  may  be  affirmed,"  said  he,  "without  extrava 
gance,  that  the  free  institutions  we  enjoy  have  devel 
oped  the  powers  and  improved  the  condition  of  our 
whole  people  beyond  any  example  in  the  world.  Of 
this  we  now  have  a  striking  and  an  impressive  illus 
tration.  So  large  an  army  as  the  government  has  now 
on  foot  was  never  before  known,  without  a  soldier  in  it 
but  who  has  taken  his  place  there  of  his  own  free 
choice.  But  more  than  this,  there  are  many  single  regi 
ments  whose  members,  one  and  another,  possess  full 
practical  knowledge  of  all  the  arts,  sciences,  profes 
sions,  and  whatever  else,  whether  useful  or  elegant, 
is  known  in  the  world ;  and  there  is  scarcely  one  from 
which  there  could  not  be  selected  a  President,  a  cab 
inet,  a  congress,  and,  perhaps,  a  court,  abundantly  com 
petent  to  administer  the  government  itself.  .  .  . 
This  is  essentially  a  people's  contest.  On  the  side  of 
the  Union  it  is  a  struggle  for  maintaining  in  the  world 
that  form  and  substance  of  government  whose  leading 
object  is  to  elevate  the  condition  of  men;  to  lift  arti- 


220  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

ficial  weights  from  all  shoulders;  to  clear  the  paths  of 
laudable  pursuit  for  all;  to  afford  all  an  unfettered 
start,  and  a  fair  chance  in  the  race  of  life.  ...  I 
am  most  happy  to  believe  that  the  plain  people  under 
stand  and  appreciate  this.  It  is  worthy  of  note  that 
while  in  this,  the  government's  hour  of  trial,  large 
numbers  of  those  in  the  army  and  navy  who  have  been 
favored  with  the  offices  have  resigned  and  proved  false 
to  the  hand  which  had  pampered  them,  not  one  common 
soldier  or  common  sailor  is  known  to  have  deserted  his 
flag." 

Hearty  applause  greeted  that  portion  of  the  message 
which  asked  for  means  to  make  the  contest  short  and 
decisive;  and  Congress  acted  promptly  by  authorizing 
a  loan  of  $250,000,000  and  an  army  not  to  exceed 
one  million  men.  All  of  President  Lincoln's  war  mea 
sures  for  which  no  previous  sanction  of  law  existed 
were  duly  legalized ;  additional  direct  income  and  tariff 
taxes  were  laid;  and  the  Force  Bill  of  1795,  and 
various  other  laws  relating  to  conspiracy,  piracy,  un 
lawful  recruiting,  and  kindred  topics,  were  amended 
or  passed. 

Throughout  the  whole  history  of  the  South,  by  no 
means  the  least  of  the  evils  entailed  by  the  institution 
of  slavery  was  the  dread  of  slave  insurrections  which 
haunted  every  master's  household ;  and  this  vague  ter 
ror  was  at  once  intensified  by  the  outbreak  of  civil  war. 
It  stands  to  the  lasting  credit  of  the  negro  race  in  the 
LTnited  States  that  the  wrongs  of  their  long  bondage 
provoked  them  to  no  such  crime,  and  that  the  Civil 
War  appears  not  to  have  even  suggested,  much  less 
started,  any  such  organization  or  attempt.  But  the 
John  Brown  raid  had  indicated  some  possibility  of  the 
kind,  and  when  the  Union  troops  began  their  move 
ments,  Generals  Butler  in  Marvland  and  Patterson  in 


THE   CONTRABAND  221 

Pennsylvania,  moving  toward  Harper's  Ferry,  and 
McClellan  in  West  Virginia,  in  order  to  reassure  non- 
combatants,  severally  issued  orders  that  all  attempts 
at  slave  insurrection  should  be  suppressed.  It  was  a 
most  pointed  and  significant  warning  to  the  leaders  of 
the  rebellion  how  much  more  vulnerable  the  peculiar 
institution  was  in  war  than  in  peace,  and  that  their 
ill-considered  scheme  to  protect  and  perpetuate  slavery 
would  prove  the  most  potent  engine  for  its  destruction. 

The  first  effect  of  opening  hostilities  was  to  give  ad 
venturous  or  discontented  slaves  the  chance  to  escape 
into  Union  camps,  where,  even  against  orders  to  the 
contrary,  they  found  practical  means  of  protection  or 
concealment  for  the  sake  of  the  help  they  could  render 
as  cooks,  servants,  or  teamsters,  or  for  the  information 
they  could  give  or  obtain,  or  the  invaluable  service  they 
could  render  as  guides.  Practically;  therefore,  at  the 
very  beginning,  the  war  created  a  bond  of  mutual  sym 
pathy,  based  on  mutual  helpfulness,  between  the  South 
ern  negro  and  the  Union  volunteer;  and  as  fast  as  the 
Union  troops  advanced,  and  secession  masters  fled, 
more  or  less  slaves  found  liberation  and  refuge  in  the 
Union  camps. 

At  some  points,  indeed,  this  tendency  created  an  em 
barrassment  to  Union  commanders.  A  few  days  after 
General  Butler  assumed  command  of  the  Union  troops 
at  Fortress  Monroe,  the  agent  of  a  rebel  master  who 
had  fled  from  the  neighborhood  came  to  demand,  under 
the  provisions  of  the  fugitive-slave  law,  three  field 
hands  alleged  to  be  in  Butler's  camp.  Butler  re 
sponded  that  as  Virginia  claimed  to  be  a  foreign  coun 
try,  the  fugitive-slave  law  was  clearly  inoperative, 
unless  the  owner  would  come  and  take  an  oath  of  alle 
giance  to  the  United  States.  In  connection  with  this 
incident,  the  newspaper  report  stated  that  as  the  breast- 


222  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

works  and  batteries  which  had  been  so  rapidly  erected 
for  Confederate  defense  in  every  direction  on  the  Vir 
ginia  peninsula  were  built  by  enforced  negro  labor  un 
der  rigorous  military  impressment,  negroes  were  mani 
festly  contraband  of  war  under  international  law. 
The  dictum  was  so  pertinent,  and  the  equity  so  plain, 
that,  though  it  was  not  officially  formulated  by  the  gen 
eral  until  two  months  later,  it  sprang  at  once  into  pop 
ular  acceptance  and  application;  and  from  that  time 
forward  the  words  "slave"  and  "negro"  were  every 
where  within  the  Union  lines  replaced  by  the  familiar, 
significant  term  "contraband." 

While  Butler's  happy  designation  had  a  more  con 
vincing  influence  on  public  thought  than  a  volume  of 
discussion,  it  did  not  immediately  solve  the  whole 
question.  Within  a  few  days  he  reported  that  he  had 
slave  property  to  the  value  of  $60,000  in  his  hands, 
and  by  the  end  of  July  nine  hundred  "contrabands," 
men,  women,  and  children,  of  all  ages.  What  was 
their  legal  status,  and  how  should  they  be  disposed  of  ? 
It  was  a  knotty  problem,  for  upon  its  solution  might 
depend  the  sensitive  public  opinion  and  balancing,  un 
decided  loyalty  and  political  action  of  the  border  slave 
States  of  Maryland,  West  Virginia,  Kentucky,  and 
Missouri.  In  solving  the  problem,  President  Lincoln 
kept  in  mind  the  philosophic  maxim  of  one  of  his 
favorite  stories,  that  when  the  Western  Methodist  pre 
siding  elder,  riding  about  the  circuit  during  the  spring 
freshets,  was  importuned  by  his  young  companion  how 
they  should  ever  be  able  to  get  across  the  swollen 
waters  of  Fox  River,  which  they  were  approaching, 
the  elder  quieted  him  by  saying  he  had  made  it  the  rule 
of  his  life  never  to  cross  Fox  River  till  he  came  to  it. 

The  President  did  not  immediately  decide,  but  left 
it  to  be  treated  as  a  question  of  camp  and  local  police, 


THE   CONTRABAND  223 

in  the  discretion  of  each  commander.  Under  this 
theory,  later  in  the  war,  some  commanders  excluded, 
others  admitted  such  fugitives  to  their  camps;  and  the 
curt  formula  of  General  Orders,  "We  have  nothing 
to  do  with  slaves.  We  are  neither  negro  stealers  nor 
negro  catchers,"  was  easily  construed  by  subordinate 
officers  to  justify  the  practice  of  either  course.  Inter 
arma  silent  leges.  For  the  present,  Butler  was  in 
structed  not  to  surrender  such  fugitives,  but  to  employ 
them  in  suitable  labor,  and  leave  the  question  of  their 
final  disposition  for  future  determination.  Congress 
greatly  advanced  the  problem,  soon  after  the  battle  of 
Bull  Run,  by  adopting  an  amendment  which  confis 
cated  a  rebel  master's  right  to  his  slave  when,  by  his 
consent,  such  slave  was  employed  in  service  or  labor 
hostile  to  the  United  States.  The  debates  exhibited 
but  little  spirit  of  partizanship,  even  on  this  feature  of 
the  slavery  question.  The  border  State  members  did 
not  attack  the  justice  of  such  a  penalty.  They  could 
only  urge  that  it  was  unconstitutional  and  inexpedient. 
On  the  general  policy  of  the  war,  both  houses,  with 
but  few  dissenting  votes,  passed  the  resolution,  offered 
by  Mr.  Crittenden,  which  declared  that  the  war  was  not 
waged  for  oppression  or  subjugation,  or  to  interfere 
with  the  rights  or  institutions  of  States,  "but  to  defend 
and  maintain  the  supremacy  of  the  Constitution,  and  to 
preserve  the  Union  with  all  the  dignity,  equality,  and 
rights  of  the  several  States  unimpaired."  The  special 
session  adjourned  on  August  6,  having  in  a  single 
month  completed  and  enacted  a  thorough  and  compre 
hensive  system  of  war  legislation. 

The  military  events  that  were  transpiring  in  the 
meanwhile  doubtless  had  their  effect  in  hastening  the 
decision  and  shortening  the  labors  of  Congress.  To 
command  the  thirteen  regiments  of  militia  furnished 


224  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

by  the  State  of  Ohio,  Governor  Dennison  had  given  a 
commission  of  major-general  to  George  B.  McClellan, 
who  had  been  educated  at  West  Point  and  served  with 
distinction  in  the  Mexican  War,  and  who,  through 
unusual  opportunities  in  travel  and  special  duties  in 
surveys  and  exploration,  had  gained  acquirements  and 
qualifications  that  appeared  to  fit  him  for  a  brilliant 
career.  Being  but  thirty-five  years  old,  and  having 
reached  only  the  grade  of  captain,  he  had  resigned 
from  the  army,  and  was  at  the  moment  serving  as 
president  of  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi  Railroad.  Gen 
eral  Scott  warmly  welcomed  his  appointment  to  lead 
the  Ohio  contingent,  and  so  industriously  facilitated 
his  promotion  that  by  the  beginning  of  June  Mc- 
Clellan's  militia  commission  as  major-general  had  been 
changed  to  a  commission  for  the  same  grade  in  the 
regular  army,  and  he  found  himself  assigned  to  the 
command  of  a  military  department  extending  from 
Western  Virginia  to  Missouri.  Though  this  was  a 
leap  in  military  title,  rank,  and  power  which  excels  the 
inventions  of  romance,  it  was  necessitated  by  the  sud 
den  exigencies  of  army  expansion  over  the  vast  ter 
ritory  bordering  the  insurrection,  and  for  a  while 
seemed  justified  by  the  hopeful  promise  indicated  in  the 
young  officer's  zeal  and  activity. 

His  instructions  made  it  a  part  of  his  duty  to  en 
courage  and  support  the  Unionists  of  Western  Virginia 
in  their  political  movement  to  divide  the  State  and 
erect  a  Union  commonwealth  out  of  that  portion  of  it 
lying  northwest  of  the  Alleghanies.  General  Lee,  not 
fully  informed  of  the  adverse  popular  sentiment,  sent 
a  few  Confederate  regiments  into  that  region  to  gather 
recruits  and  hold  the  important  mountain  passes. 
McClellan,  in  turn,  advanced  a  detachment  eastward 
from  Wheeling,  to  protect  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio 


RICH   MOUNTAIN  225 

railroad;  and  at  the  beginning  of  June,  an  expedition 
of  two  regiments,  led  by  Colonel  Kelly,  made  a  spirited 
dash  upon  Philippi,  where,  by  a  complete  surprise,  he 
routed  and  scattered  Porterfield's  recruiting  detach 
ment  of  one  thousand  Confederates.  Following  up 
this  initial  success,  McClellan  threw  additional  forces 
across  the  Ohio,  and  about  a  month  later  had  the  good 
fortune,  on  July  1 1 ,  by  a  flank  movement  under  Rose- 
crans,  to  drive  a  regiment  of  the  enemy  out  of  strong 
intrenchments  on  Rich  Mountain,  force  the  surrender 
of  the  retreating  garrison  on  the  following  day,  July 
12,  and  to  win  a  third  success  on  the  thirteenth  over 
another  flying  detachment  at  Carrick's  Ford,  one  of  the 
crossings  of  the  Cheat  River,  where  the  Confederate 
General  Garnett  was  killed  in  a  skirmish-fire  between 
sharp-shooters. 

These  incidents,  happening  on  three  successive  days, 
and  in  distance  forty  miles  apart,  made  a  handsome 
showing  for  the  young  department  commander  when 
gathered  into  the  single,  short  telegram  in  which  he 
reported  to  Washington  that.  Garnett  was  killed,  his 
force  routed,  at  least  two  hundred  of  the  enemy  killed, 
and  seven  guns  and  one  thousand  prisoners  taken. 
"Our  success  is  complete,  and  secession  is  killed  in  this 
country,"  concluded  the  despatch.  The  result,  indeed, 
largely  overshadowed  in  importance  the  means  which 
accomplished  it.  The  Union  loss  was  only  thirteen 
killed  and  forty  wounded.  In  subsequent  effect,  these 
two  comparatively  insignificant  skirmishes  permanently 
recovered  the  State  of  West  Virginia  to  the  Union. 
The  main  credit  was,  of  course,  due  to  the  steadfast 
loyalty  of  the  people  of  that  region. 

This  victory  afforded  welcome  relief  to  the  strained 
and  impatient  public  opinion  of  the  Northern  States, 
and  sharpened  the  eager  expectation  of  the  authorities 


226  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

at  Washington  of  similar  results  from  the  projected 
Virginia  campaign.  The  organization  and  command 
of  that  column  were  intrusted  to  Brigadier-General 
McDowell,  advanced  to  this  grade  from  his  previous 
rank  of  major.  He  was  forty-two  years  old,  an  ac 
complished  West  Point  graduate,  and  had  won  distinc 
tion  in  the  Mexican  Wa-r,  though  since  that  time  he 
had  been  mainly  engaged  in  staff  duty.  On  the  morn 
ing  of  July  1 6,  he  began  his  advance  from  the  fortifica 
tions  of  Washington,  with  a  marching  column  of  about 
twenty-eight  thousand  men  and  a  total  of  forty-nine 
guns,  an  additional  division  of  about  six  thousand  be 
ing  left  behind  to  guard  his  commuications.  Owing  to 
the  rawness  of  his  troops,  the  first  few  days'  march  was 
necessarily  cautious  and  cumbersome. 

The  enemy,  under  Beauregard,  had  collected  about 
twenty-three  thousand  men  and  thirty-five  guns,  and 
was  posted  behind  Bull  Run.  A  preliminary  engage 
ment  occurred  on  Thursday,  July  18,  at  Blackburn's 
Ford  on  that  stream,  which  served  to  develop  the 
enemy's  strong  position,  but  only  delayed  the  advance 
until  the  whole  of  McDowell's  force  reached  Centre- 
ville.  Here  McDowell  halted,  spent  Friday  and  Satur 
day  in  reconnoitering,  and  on  Sunday,  July  21,  began 
the  battle  by  a  circuitous  march  across  Bull  Run  and 
attacking  the  enemy's  left  flank. 

It  proved  that  the  plan  was  correctly  chosen,  but,  by 
a  confusion  in  the  march,  the  attack,  intended  for  day 
break,  was  delayed  until  nine  o'clock.  Nevertheless, 
the  first  half  of  the  battle,  during  the  forenoon,  was 
entirely  successful,  the  Union  lines  steadily  driving  the 
enemy  southward,  and  enabling  additional  Union  bri 
gades  to  join  the  attacking  column  by  a  direct  march 
from  Centreville. 

At  noon,  however,  the  attack  came  to  a  halt,  partly 


BULL  RUN  227 

through  the  fatigue  of  the  troops,  partly  because  the 
advancing  line,  having  swept  the  field  for  nearly  a  mile, 
found  itself  in  a  valley,  from  which  further  progress 
had  to  be  made  with  all  the  advantage  of  the  ground  in 
favor  of  the  enemy.  In  the  lull  of  the  conflict  which 
for  a  while  ensued,  the  Confederate  commander,  with 
little  hope  except  to  mitigate  a  defeat,  hurriedly  con 
centrated  his  remaining  artillery  and  supporting  regi 
ments  into  a  semicircular  line  of  defense  at  the  top  of 
the  hill  that  the  Federals  would  be  obliged  to  mount, 
and  kept  them  well  concealed  among  the  young  pines 
at  the  edge  of  the  timber,  with  an  open  field  in  their 
front. 

Against  this  second  position  of  the  enemy,  compris 
ing  twelve  regiments,  twenty-two  guns,  and  two  com 
panies  of  cavalry,  McDowell  advanced  in  the  afternoon 
with  an  attacking  force  of  fourteen  regiments,  twenty- 
four  guns,  and  a  single  battalion  of  cavalry,  but  with 
all  the  advantages  of  position  against  him.  A  fluc 
tuating  and  intermitting  attack  resulted.  The  nature 
of  the  ground  rendered  a  combined  advance  impossible. 
The  Union  brigades  were  sent  forward  and  repulsed 
by  piecemeal.  A  battery  was  lost  by  mistaking  a  Con 
federate  for  a  Union  regiment.  Even  now  the  victory 
seemed  to  vibrate,  when  a  new  flank  attack  by  seven 
rebel  regiments,  from  an  entirely  unexpected  direction, 
suddenly  impressed  the  Union  troops  with  the  belief 
that  Johnston's  army  from  Harper's  Ferry  had  reached 
the  battle-field;  and,  demoralized  by  this  belief,  the 
Union  commands,  by  a  common  impulse,  gave  up  the 
fight  as  lost,  and  half  marched,  half  ran  from  the  field. 
Before  reaching  Centreville,  the  retreat  at  one  point 
degenerated  into  a  downright  panic  among  army  team 
sters  and  a  considerable  crowd  of  miscellaneous  camp- 
followers  ;  and  here  a  charge  or  two  by  the  Confederate 


228  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

cavalry  companies  captured  thirteen  Union  guns  and 
quite  a  harvest  of  army  wagons. 

When  the  truth  came  to  be  known,  it  was  found  that 
through  the  want  of  skill  and  courage  on  the  part  of 
General  Patterson  in  his  operations  at  Harper's  Ferry, 
General  Johnston,  with  his  whole  Confederate  army, 
had  been  allowed  to  slip  away ;  and  so  far  from  coming 
suddenly  into  the  battle  of  Bull  Run,  the  bulk  of  them 
were  already  in  Beauregard's  camps  on  Saturday,  and 
performed  the  heaviest  part  of  the  fighting  in  Sunday's 
conflict. 

The  sudden  cessation  of  the  battle  left  the  Confed 
erates  in  doubt  whether  their  victory  was  final,  or  only 
a  prelude  to  a  fresh  Union  attack.  But  as  the  Union 
forces  not  only  retreated  from  the  field,  but  also  from 
Centreville,  it  took  on,  in  their  eyes,  the  proportions 
of  a  great  triumph;  confirming  their  expectation  of 
achieving  ultimate  independence,  and.  in  fact,  giving 
them  a  standing  in  the  eyes  of  foreign  nations  which 
they  had  hardly  dared  hope  for  so  soon.  In  numbers 
of  killed  and  wounded,  the  two  armies  suffered  about 
equally ;  and  General  Johnston  writes  :  "The  Confed 
erate  army  was  more  disorganized  by  victory  than  that 
of  the  United  States  by  defeat."  Manassas  was  turned 
into  a  fortified  camp,  but  the  rebel  leaders  felt  them 
selves  unable  to  make  an  aggressive  movement  during 
the  whole  of  the  following  autumn  and  winter. 

The  shock  of  the  defeat  was  deep  and  painful  to  the 
administration  and  the  people  of  the  North.  Up  to  late 
Sunday  afternoon  favorable  reports  had  come  to 
Washington  from  the  battle-field,  and  every  one  be 
lieved  in  an  assured  victory.  When  a  telegram  came 
about  five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  that  the  day  was 
lost,  and  McDowell's  army  in  full  retreat  through 
Centreville,  General  Scott  refused  to  credit  the  news, 


BULL   RUN  229 

so  contradictory  of  everything  which  had  been  heard 
up  to  that  hour.  But  the  intelligence  was  quickly  con 
firmed.  The  impulse  of  retreat  once  started,  Mc 
Dowell's  effort  to  arrest  it  at  Centreville  proved  useless. 
The  regiments  and  brigades  not  completely  disorgan 
ized  made  an  unmolested  and  comparatively  orderly 
march  back  to  the  fortifications  of  Washington,  while 
on  the  following  day  a  horde  of  stragglers  found 
their  way  across  the  bridges  of  the  Potomac  into  the 
city. 

President  Lincoln  received  the  news  quietly  and 
without  any  visible  sign  of  perturbation  or  excitement ; 
but  he  remained  awake  and  in  the  executive  office  all 
of  Sunday  night,  listening  to  the  personal  narratives 
of  a  number  of  congressmen  and  senators  who  had, 
with  undue  curiosity,  followed  the  army  and  witnessed 
some  of  the  sounds  and  sights  of  the  battle.  By  the 
dawn  of  Monday  morning  the  President  had  substan 
tially  made  up  his  judgment  of  the  battle  and  its 
probable  results,  and  the  action  dictated  by  the  un 
toward  event.  This  was,  in  brief,  that  the  militia  regi 
ments  enlisted  under  the  three  months'  call  should  be 
mustered  out  as  soon  as  practicable;  the  organization 
of  the  new  three  years'  forces  be  pushed  forward  both 
east  and  west;  Manassas  and  Harper's  Ferry  and  the 
intermediate  lines  of  communication  be  seized  and 
held;  and  a  joint  movement  organized  from  Cincinnati 
on  East  Tennessee,  and  from  Cairo  on  Memphis. 

Meanwhile,  General  McClellan  was  ordered  from 
West  Virginia  to  Washington,  where  he  arrived  on 
July  26,  and  assumed  command  of  the  Division  of  the 
Potomac,  comprising  the  troops  in  and  around  Wash 
ington,  on  both  sides  of  the  river.  He  quickly  cleared 
the  city  of  stragglers,  and  displayed  a  gratifying  ac 
tivity  in  beginning  the  organization  of  the  Army  of  the 


230  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Potomac  from  the  new  three  years'  volunteers  that 
were  pouring  into  Washington  by  every  train.  He  was 
received  by  the  administration  and  the  army  with  the 
warmest  friendliness  and  confidence,  and  for  awhile 
seemed  to  reciprocate  these  feelings  with  zeal  and 
gratitude. 


XVII 

General  Scott's  Plans — Criticised  as  the  "Anaconda" — 
The  Three  Fields  of  Conflict — Fremont  Appointed 
Major-General — His  Military  Failures — Battle  of  Wil 
son  s  Creek — Hunter  Ordered  to  Fremont — Fremont's 
Proclamation — President  Revokes  Fremont's  Procla 
mation — Lincoln's  Letter  to  Browning — Surrender  of 
Lexington — Fremont  Takes  the  Field — Cameron's 
Visit  to  Fremont — Fremont's  Removal 

THE  military  genius  and  experience  of  General 
Scott,  from  the  first,  pretty  correctly  divined  the 
grand  outline  of  military  operations  which  would  be 
come  necessary  in  reducing  the  revolted  Southern 
States  to  renewed  allegiance.  Long  before  the  battle 
of  Bull  Run  was  planned,  he  urged  that  the  first  sev 
enty-five  regiments  of  three  months'  militia  could  not 
be  relied  on  for  extensive  campaigns,  because  their 
term  of  service  would  expire  before  they  could  be  well 
organized.  His  outline  suggestion,  therefore,  was  that 
the  new  three  years'  volunteer  army  be  placed  in  ten 
or  fifteen  healthy  camps  and  given  at  least  four  months 
of  drill  and  tactical  instruction ;  and  when  the  navy  had, 
by  a  rigid  blockade,  closed  all  the  harbors  along  the  sea 
board  of  the  Southern  States,  the  fully  prepared  army 
should,  by  invincible  columns,  move  down  the  Missis 
sippi  River  to  New  Orleans,  leaving  a  strong  cordon 
of  military  posts  behind  it  to  keep  open  the  stream,  join 
hands  with  the  blockade,  and  thus  envelop  the  princi- 

231 


232  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

pal  area  of  rebellion  in  a  powerful  military  grasp  which 
would  paralyze  and  effectually  kill  the  insurrection. 
Even  while  suggesting  this  plan,  however,  the  general 
admitted  that  the  great  obstacle  to  its  adoption  would 
be  the  impatience  of  the  patriotic  and  loyal  LTnion  peo 
ple  and  leaders,  who  would  refuse  to  wait  the  neces 
sary  length  of  time. 

The  general  was  correct  in  his  apprehension.  The 
newspapers  criticized  his  plan  in  caustic  editorials  and 
ridiculous  cartoons  as  "Scott's  Anaconda,"  and  pub 
lic  opinion  rejected  it  in  an  overwhelming  demand  for 
a  prompt  and  energetic  advance.  Scott  was  correct 
in  military  theory,  while  the  people  and  the  administra 
tion  were  right  in  practice,  under  existing  political  con 
ditions.  Although  Bull  Run  seemed  to  justify  the 
general,  West  Virginia  and  Missouri  vindicated  the 
President  and  the  people. 

It  can  now  be  seen  that  still  a  third  element — geog 
raphy — intervened  to  give  shape  and  sequence  to  the 
main  outlines  of  the  Civil  War.  When,  at  the  begin 
ning  of  May,  General  Scott  gave  his  advice,  the  seat  of 
government  of  the  first  seven  Confederate  States  was 
still  at  Montgomery,  Alabama.  By  the  adhesion  of 
the  four  interior  border  States  to  the  insurrection,  and 
the  removal  of  the  archives  and  administration  of 
Jefferson  Davis  to  Richmond,  Virginia,  toward  the  end 
of  June,  as  the  capital  of  the  now  eleven  Confederate 
States,  Washington  necessarily  became  the  center  of 
Union  attack,  and  Richmond  the  center  of  Confederate 
defense.  From  the  day  when  McDowell  began  his 
march  to  Bull  Run,  to  that  when  Lee  evacuated  Rich 
mond  in  his  final  hopeless  flight,  the  route  between 
these  two  opposing  capitals  remained  the  principal  and 
dominating  line  of  military  operations,  and  the  region 
between  Chesapeake  Bay  and  the  Potomac  River  on  the 


FREMONT,   MAJOR-GENERAL          233 

east,  and  the  chain  of  the  Alleghanies  on  the  west,  the 
primary  field  of  strategy. 

According  to  geographical  features,  the  second  great 
field  of  strategy  lay  between  the  Alleghany  Mountains 
and  the  Mississippi  River,  and  the  third  between  the 
Mississippi  River,  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and  the  Rio 
Grande.  Except  in  Western  Virginia,  the  attitude  of 
neutrality  assumed  by  Kentucky  for  a  considerable 
time  delayed  the  definition  of  the  military  frontier  and 
the  beginning  of  active  hostilities  in  the  second  field, 
thus  giving  greater  momentary  importance  to  condi 
tions  existing  and  events  transpiring  in  Missouri,  with 
the  city  of  St.  Louis  as  the  principal  center  of  the  third 
great  military  field. 

The  same  necessity  which  dictated  the  promotion  of 
General  McClellan  at  one  bound  from  captain  to  major- 
general  compelled  a  similar  phenomenal  promotion, 
not  alone  of  officers  of  the  regular  army,  but  also  of 
eminent  civilians  to  high  command  and  military  re 
sponsibility  in  the  immense  volunteer  force  authorized 
by  Congress.  Events,  rather  than  original  purpose, 
had  brought  McClellan  into  prominence  and  ranking 
duty;  but  now,  by  design,  the  President  gave  John  C. 
Fremont  a  commission  of  major-general,  and  placed 
him  in  command  of  the  third  great  military  field,  with 
headquarters  at  St.  Louis,  with  the  leading  idea  that  he 
should  organize  the  military  strength  of  the  Northwest, 
first,  to  hold  Missouri  to  the  Union,  and,  second,  by  a 
carefully  prepared  military  expedition  open  the  Mis 
sissippi  River.  By  so  doing,  he  would  sever  the  Con 
federate  States,  reclaim  or  conquer  the  region  lying 
west  of  the  great  stream,  and  thus  reduce  by  more  than 
one  half  the  territorial  area  of  the  insurrection. 
Though  he  had  been  an  army  lieutenant,  he  had  no 
experience  in  active  war;  yet  the  talent  and  energy 


234  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

he  had  displayed  in  Western  military  exploration,  and 
the  political  prominence  he  had  reached  as  candidate 
of  the  Republican  party  for  President  in  1856,  seemed 
to  fit  him  preeminently  for  such  a  duty. 

While  most  of  the  volunteers  from  New  England 
and  the  Middle  States  were  concentrated  at  Wash 
ington  and  dependent  points,  the  bulk  of  the  Western 
regiments  was,  for  the  time  being,  put  under  the  com 
mand  of  Fremont  for  present  and  prospective  duty. 
But  the  high  hopes  which  the  administration  placed  in 
the  general  were  not  realized.  The  genius  which  could 
lead  a  few  dozen  or  a  few  hundred  Indian  scouts  and 
mountain  trappers  over  desert  plains  and  through  the 
fastnesses  of  the  Sierra  Nevada,  that  could  defy  savage 
hostilities  and  outlive  starvation  amid  imprisoning 
snows,  failed  signally  before  the  task  of  animating  and 
combining  the  patriotic  enthusiasm  of  eight  or  ten 
great  northwestern  States,  and  organizing  and  leading 
an  army  of  one  hundred  thousand  eager  volunteers 
in  a  comprehensive  and  decisive  campaign  to  recover 
a  great  national  highway.  From  the  first,  Fremont 
failed  in  promptness,  in  foresight,  in  intelligent  super 
vision;  and,  above  all,  in  inspiring  confidence  and  at 
tracting  assistance  and  devotion.  His  military  admin 
istration  created  serious  extravagance  and  confusion, 
and  his  personal  intercourse  excited  the  distrust  and  re 
sentment  of  the  governors  and  civilian  officials,  whose 
counsel  and  cooperation  were  essential  to  his  usefulness 
and  success. 

While  his  resources  were  limited,  and  while  he  for 
tified  St.  Louis  and  reinforced  Cairo,  a  yet  more  impor 
tant  point  needed  his  attention  and  help.  Lyon,  who 
had  followed  Governor  Jackson  and  General  Price  in 
their  flight  from  Boonville  to  Springfield  in  southern 
Missouri,  found  his  forces  diminished  beyond  his  ex- 


BATTLE  OF  WILSON'S   CREEK        235 

pectation  by  the  expiration  of  the  term  of  service  of  his 
three  months'  regiments,  and  began  to  be  threatened 
by  a  northward  concentration  of  Confederate  detach 
ments  from  the  Arkansas  line  and  the  Indian  Territory. 
The  neglect  of  his  appeals  for  help  placed  him  in  the 
situation  where  he  could  neither  safely  remain  inactive, 
nor  safely  retreat.  He  therefore  took  the  chances  of 
scattering  the  enemy  before  him  by  a  sudden,  daring 
attack  with  his  five  thousand  effectives,  against  nearly 
treble  numbers,  in  the  battle  of  Wilson's  Creek,  at  day 
light  on  August  10.  The  casualties  on  the  two  sides 
were  nearly  equal,  and  the  enemy  was  checked  and 
crippled ;  but  the  Union  army  sustained  a  fatal  loss  in 
the  death  of  General  Lyon,  who  was  instantly  killed 
while  leading  a  desperate  bayonet  charge.  His  skill 
and  activity  had,  so  far,  been  the  strength  of  the  Union 
cause  in  Missouri.  The  absence  of  his  counsel  and  per 
sonal  example  rendered  a  retreat  to  the  railroad  ter 
minus  at  Rolla  necessary.  This  discouraging  event 
turned  public  criticism  sharply  upon  Fremont.  Loath 
to  yield  to  mere  public  clamor,  and  averse  to  hasty 
changes  in  military  command,  Mr.  Lincoln  sought  to 
improve  the  situation  by  sending  General  David  Hun 
ter  to  take  a  place  on  Fremont's  staff. 

"General  Fremont  needs  assistance/'  said  his  note 
to  Hunter,  "which  it  is  difficult  to  give  him.  He  is  los 
ing  the  confidence  of  men  near  him,  whose  support  any 
man  in  his  position  must  have  to  be  successful.  His 
cardinal  mistake  is  that  he  isolates  himself,  and  allows 
nobody  to  see  him;  and  by  which  he  does  not  know 
what  is  going  on  in  the  very  matter  he  is  dealing  with. 
He  needs  to  have  by  his  side  a  man  of  large  experience. 
Will  you  not,  for  me,  take  that  place?  Your  rank  is  one 
grade  too  high  to  be  ordered  to  it ;  but  will  you  not  serve 
the  country  and  oblige  me  by  taking  it  voluntarily?" 


236  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

This  note  indicates,  better  than  pages  of  description, 
the  kind,  helpful,  and  forbearing  spirit  with  which  the 
President,  through  the  long  four  years'  war,  treated 
his  military  commanders  and  subordinates ;  and  which, 
in  several  instances,  met  such  ungenerous  return.  But 
even  while  Mr.  Lincoln  was  attempting  to  smooth  this 
difficulty,  Fremont  had  already  burdened  him  with  two 
additional  embarrassments.  One  was  a  perplexing  per 
sonal  quarrel  the  general  had  begun  with  the  influential 
Blair  family,  represented  by  Colonel  Frank  Blair,  the 
indefatigable  Unionist  leader  in  Missouri,"  and  Mont 
gomery  Blair,  the  postmaster-general  in  Lincoln's  cab 
inet,  who  had  hitherto  been  Fremont's  most  influential 
friends  and  supporters;  and,  in  addition,  the  father  of 
these,  Francis  P.  Blair,  Sr.,  a  veteran  politician  whose 
influence  dated  from  Jackson's  administration,  and 
through  whose  assistance  Fremont  had  been  nominated 
as  presidential  candidate  in  1856. 

The  other  embarrassment  was  of  a  more  serious  and 
far-reaching  nature.  Conscious  that  he  was  losing  the 
esteem  and  confidence  of  both  civil  and  military  leaders 
in  the  West,  Fremont's  adventurous  fancy  caught  at 
the  idea  of  rehabilitating  himself  before  the  public  by 
a  bold  political  manceuver.  Day  by  day  the  relation  of 
slavery  to  the  Civil  War  was  becoming  a  more  trouble 
some  question,  and  exciting  impatient  and  angry  dis 
cussion.  Without  previous  consultation  with  the  Presi 
dent  or  any  of  his  advisers  or  friends,  Fremont,  on 
August  30,  wrote  and  printed,  as  commander  of  the 
Department  of  the  West,  a  proclamation  establishing 
martial  law  throughout  the  State  of  Missouri,  and  an 
nouncing  that : 

"All  persons  who  shall  be  taken  with  arms  in  their 
hands  within  these  lines  shall  be  tried  by  court-martial, 
and  if  found  guilty  will  be  shot.  The  property,  real 


FREMONT'S   PROCLAMATION          237 

and  personal,  of  all  persons  in  the  State  of  Missouri 
who  shall  take  up  arms  against  the  United  States,  or 
who  shall  be  directly  proven  to  have  taken  an  active 
part  with  their  enemies  in  the  field,  is  declared  to  be 
confiscated  to  the  public  use;  and  their  slaves,  if  any 
they  have,  are  hereby  declared  freemen." 

The  reason  given  in  the  proclamation  for  this  drastic 
and  dictatorial  measure  was  to  suppress  disorder, 
maintain  the  public  peace,  and  protect  persons  and 
property  of  loyal  citizens — all  simple  police  duties. 
For  issuing  his  proclamation  without  consultation  with 
the  President,  he  could  offer  only  the  flimsy  excuse 
that  it  involved  two  days  of  time  to  communicate  with 
Washington,  while  he  well  knew  that  no  battle  was 
pending  and  no  invasion  in  progress.  This  reckless 
misuse  of  power  President  Lincoln  also  corrected  with 
his  dispassionate  prudence  and  habitual  courtesy.  He 
immediately  wrote  to  the  general : 

"Mv  DEAR  SIR:  Two  points  in  your  proclamation 
of  August  30  give  me  some  anxiety : 

"First.  Should  you  shoot  a  man,  according  to  the 
proclamation,  the  Confederates  would  very  certainly 
shoot  our  best  men  in  their  hands,  in  retaliation;  and 
so,  man  for  man,  indefinitely.  It  is,  therefore,  my 
order  that  you  allow  no  man  to  be  shot  under  the 
proclamation,  without  first  having  my  approbation  or 
consent. 

"Second.  I  think  there  is  great  danger  that  the 
closing  paragraph,  in  relation  to  the  confiscation  of 
property  and  the  liberating  slaves  of  traitorous  own 
ers,  will  alarm  our  Southern  Union  friends  and  turn 
them  against  us;  perhaps  ruin  our  rather  fair  prospect 
for  Kentucky.  Allow  me,  therefore,  to  ask  that  you 
will,  as  of  your  own  motion,  modify  that  paragraph  so 
as  to  conform  to  the  first  and  fourth  sections  of  the  act 


238  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

of  Congress  entitled,  'An  act  to  confiscate  property 
used  for  insurrectionary  purposes/  approved  August  6, 
1 86 1,  and  a  copy  of  which  act  I  herewith  send  you. 

"This  letter  is  written  in  a  spirit  of  caution,  and  not 
of  censure.  I  send  it  by  a  special  messenger,  in  order 
that  it  may  certainly  and  speedily  reach  you." 

But  the  headstrong  general  was  too  blind  and  self 
ish  to  accept  this  mild  redress  of  a  fault  that  would 
have  justified  instant  displacement  from  command.  He 
preferred  that  the  President  should  openly  direct  him  to 
make  the  correction.  Admitting  that  he  decided  in  one 
night  upon  the  measure,  he  added :  "If  I  were  to  re 
tract  it  of  my  own  accord,  it  would  imply  that  I  myself 
thought  it  wrong,  and  that  I  had  acted  without  the  re 
flection  which  the  gravity  of  the  point  demanded." 
The  inference  is  plain  that  Fremont  was  unwilling  to 
lose  the  influence  of  his  hasty  step  upon  public  opinion. 
But  by  this  course  he  deliberately  placed  himself  in  an 
attitude  of  political  hostility  to  the  administration. 

The  incident  produced  something  of  the  agitation 
which  the  general  had  evidently  counted  upon.  Radical 
antislavery  men  throughout  the  free  States  applauded 
his  act  and  condemned  the  President,  and  military 
emancipation  at  once  became  a  subject  of  excited  dis 
cussion.  Even  strong  conservatives  were  carried  away 
by  the  feeling  that  rebels  would  be  but  properly  pun 
ished  by  the  loss  of  their  slaves.  To  Senator  Browning, 
the  President's  intimate  personal  friend,  who  enter 
tained  this  feeling,  Mr.  Lincoln  wrote  a  searching 
analysis  of  Fremont's  proclamation  and  its  dangers : 

"Yours  of  the  seventeenth  is  just  received ;  and,  com 
ing  from  you,  I  confess  it  astonishes  me.  That  you 
should  object  to  my  adhering  to  a  law  which  you  had 
assisted  in  making  and  presenting  to  me,  less  than  a 
month  before,  is  odd  enough.  But  this  is  a  very  small 


LETTER   TO   BROWNING  239 

part.  General  Fremont's  proclamation  as  to  confis 
cation  of  property  and  the  liberation  of  slaves  is 
purely  political,  and  not  within  the  range  of  military 
law  or  necessity.  If  a  commanding  general  finds  a 
necessity  to  seize  the  farm  of  a  private  owner,  for  a 
pasture,  an  encampment,  or  a  fortification,  he  has  the 
right  to  do  so,  and  to  so  hold  it  as  long  as  the  neces 
sity  lasts;  and  this  is  within  military  law,  because 
within  military  necessity.  But  to  say  the  farm  shall 
no  longer  belong  to  the  owner  or  his  heirs  forever,  and 
this  as  well  when  the  farm  is  not  needed  for  military 
purposes  as  when  it  is,  is  purely  political,  without  the 
savor  of  military  law  about  it.  And  the  same  is  true 
of  slaves.  If  the  general  needs  them  he  can  seize  them 
and  use  them,  but  when  the  need  is  past,  it  is  not  for 
him  to  fix  their  permanent  future  condition.  That 
must  be  settled  according  to  laws  made  by  law-makers, 
and  not  by  military  proclamations.  The  proclamation 
in  the  point  in  question  is  simply  'dictatorship.'  It 
assumes  that  the  general  may  do  anything  he  pleases — 
confiscate  the  lands  and  free  the  slaves  of  loyal  people, 
as  well  as  of  disloyal  ones.  And  going  the  whole 
figure,  I  have  no  doubt,  would  be  more  popular,  with 
some  thoughtless  people,  than  that  which  has  been 
done !  But  I  cannot  assume  this  reckless  position,  nor 
allow  others  to  assume  it  on  my  responsibility. 

"You  speak  of  it  as  being  the  only  means  of  saving 
the  government.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  itself  the  sur 
render  of  the  government.  Can  it  be  pretended  that  it 
is  any  longer  the  government  of  the  United  States — 
any  government  of  constitution  and  laws — wherein  a 
general  or  a  president  may  make  permanent  rules  of 
property  by  proclamation?  I  do  not  say  Congress 
might  not,  with  propriety,  pass  a  law  on  the  point,  just 
such  as  General  Fremont  proclaimed.  I  do  not  say  I 


240  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

might  not,  as  a  member  of  Congress,  vote  for  it.  What 
I  object  to  is,  that  I,  as  President,  shall  expressly  or 
implieclly  seize  and  exercize  the  permanent  legislative 
functions  of  the  government. 

"So  much  as  to  principle.  Now  as  to  policy.  No 
doubt  the  thing  was  popular  in  some  quarters,  and 
would  have  been  more  so  if  it  had  been  a  general  dec 
laration  of  emancipation.  The  Kentucky  legislature 
would  not  budge  till  that  proclamation  was  modified ; 
and  General  Anderson  telegraphed  me  that  on  the 
news  of  General  Fremont  having  actually  issued  deeds 
of  manumission,  a  whole  company  of  our  volunteers 
threw  down  their  arms  and  disbanded.  I  was  so  as 
sured  as  to  think  it  probable  that  the  very  arms  we 
had  furnished  Kentucky  would  be  turned  against  us. 
I  think  to  lose  Kentucky  is  nearly  the  same  as  to  lose 
the  whole  game.  Kentucky  gone,  we  cannot  hold 
Missouri,  nor,  as  I  think,  Maryland.  These  all  against 
us,  and  the  job  on  our  hands  is  too  large  for  us.  We 
would  as  well  consent  to  separation  at  once,  including 
the  surrender  of  this  capital." 

If  it  be  objected  that  the  President  himself  decreed 
military  emancipation  a  year  later,  then  it  must  be 
remembered  that  Fremont's  proclamation  differed  in 
many  essential  particulars  from  the  President's  edict 
of  January  i,  1863.  By  that  time,  also,  the  entirely 
changed  conditions  justified  a  complete  change  of  pol 
icy;  but,  above  all,  the  supreme  reason  of  military 
necessity,  upon  which  alone  Mr.  Lincoln  based  the 
constitutionality  of  his  edict  of  freedom,  was  entirely 
wanting  in  the  case  of  Fremont. 

The  harvest  of  popularity  which  Fremont  evidently 
hoped  to  secure  by  his  proclamation  was  soon  blighted 
by  a  new  military  disaster.  The  Confederate  forces 
which  had  been  united  in  the  battle  of  Wilson's  Creek 


FREMONT  TAKES   THE   FIELD        241 

quickly  became  disorganized  through  the  disagreement 
of  their  leaders  and  the  want  of  provisions  and  other 
military  supplies,  and  mainly  returned  to  Arkansas 
and  the  Indian  Territory,  whence  they  had  come.  But 
General  Price,  with  his  Missouri  contingent,  gradually 
increased  his  followers,  and  as  the  Union  retreat  from 
Springfield  to  Rolla  left  the  way  open,  began  a  north 
ward  march  through  the  western  part  of  the  State  to 
attack  Colonel  Mulligan,  who,  with  about  twenty- 
eight  hundred  Federal  troops,  intrenched  himself  at 
Lexington  on  the  Missouri  River.  Secession  sympathy 
was  strong  along  the  line  of  his  march,  and  Price 
gained  adherents  so  rapidly  that  on  September  18  he 
was  able  to  invest  Mulligan's  position  with  a  somewhat 
irregular  army  numbering  about  twenty  thousand. 
After  a  two  days'  siege,  the  garrison  was  compelled 
to  surrender,  through  the  exhaustion  of  the  supply  of 
water  in  their  cisterns.  The  victory  won,  Price  again 
immediately  retreated  southward,  losing  his  army  al 
most  as  fast  as  he  had  collected  it,  made  up,  as  it  was, 
more  in  the  spirit  and  quality  of  a  sudden  border  foray 
than  an  organized  campaign. 

For  this  new  loss,  Fremont  was  subjected  to  a 
shower  of  fierce  criticism,  which  this  time  he  sought 
to  disarm  by  ostentatious  announcements  of  immedi 
ate  activity.  "I  am  taking  the  field  myself,"  he  tele 
graphed,  "and  hope  to  destroy  the  enemy  either  before 
or  after  the  junction  of  forces  under  McCulloch." 
Four  days  after  the  surrender,  the  St.  Louis  news 
papers  printed  his  order  organizing  an  army  of  five 
divisions.  The  document  made  a  respectable  show  of 
force  on  paper,  claiming  an  aggregate  of  nearly  thirty- 
nine  thousand.  In  reality,  however,  being  scattered 
and  totally  unprepared  for  the  field,  it  possessed  no 
such  effective  strength.  For  a  month  longer  extrava- 


242  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

gant  newspaper  reports  stimulated  the  public  with  the 
hope  of  substantial  results  from  Fremont's  intended 
campaign.  Before  the  end  of  that  time,  however, 
President  Lincoln,  under  growing  apprehension,  sent 
Secretary  of  War  Cameron  and  the  adjutant-general 
of  the  army  to  Missouri  to  make  a  personal  investiga 
tion.  Reaching  Fremont's  camp  on  October  13,  they 
found  the  movement  to  be  a  mere  forced,  spasmodic 
display,  without  substantial  strength,  transportation, 
or  coherent  and  feasible  plan;  and  that  at  least  two  of 
the  division  commanders  were  without  means  to  exe 
cute  the  orders  they  had  received,  and  utterly  without 
confidence  in  their  leader,  or  knowledge  of  his  inten 
tions. 

To  give  Fremont  yet  another  chance,  the  Secretary 
of  War  withheld  the  President's  order  to  relieve  the 
general  from  command,  which  he  had  brought  with 
him,  on  Fremont's  insistence  that  a  victory  was  really 
within  his  reach.  When  this  hope  also  proved  delusive, 
and  suspicion  was  aroused  that  the  general  might  be 
intending  not  only  to  deceive,  but  to  defy  the  admin 
istration,  President  Lincoln  sent  the  following  letter 
by  a  special  friend  to  General  Curtis,  commanding  at 
St.  Louis : 

"DEAR  SIR  :  On  receipt  of  this,  with  the  accom 
panying  inclosures,  you  will  take  safe,  certain,  and 
suitable  measures  to  have  the  inclosure  addressed  to 
Major-General  Fremont  delivered  to  him  with  all  rea 
sonable  dispatch,  subject  to  these  conditions  only,  that 
if,  when  General  Fremont  shall  be  reached  by  the  mes 
senger — yourself,  or  any  one  sent  by  you — he  shall 
then  have,  in  personal  command,  fought  and  won  a 
battle,  or  shall  then  be  actually  in  a  battle,  or  shall  then 
be  in  the  immediate  presence  of  the  enemy  in  expecta 
tion  of  a  battle,  it  is  not  to  be  delivered,  but  held  for 


FREMONT'S   REMOVAL  243 

further  orders.  After,  and  not  till  after,  the  delivery 
to  General  Fremont,  let  the  inclosure  addressed  to 
General  Hunter  be  delivered  to  him." 

The  order  of  removal  was  delivered  to  Fremont  on 
November  2.  By  that  date  he  had  reached  Springfield, 
but  had  won  no  victory,  fought  no  battle,  and  was  not 
in  the  presence  of  the  enemy.  Two  of  his  divisions 
were  not  yet  even  with  him.  Still  laboring  under  the 
delusion,  perhaps  imposed  on  him  by  his  scouts,  his 
orders  stated  that  the  enemy  was  only  a  day's  march 
distant,  and  advancing  to  attack  him.  The  inclosure 
mentioned  in  the  President's  letter  to  Curtis  was  an 
order  to  General  David  Hunter  to  relieve  Fremont. 
When  he  arrived  and  assumed  command  the  scouts 
he  sent  forward  found  no  enemy  within  reach,  and  no 
such  contingency  of  battle  or  hope  of  victory  as  had 
been  rumored  and  assumed. 

Fremont's  personal  conduct  in  these  disagreeable 
circumstances  was  entirely  commendable.  He  took 
leave  of  the  army  in  a  short  farewell  order,  couched 
in  terms  of  perfect  obedience  to  authority  and  cour 
tesy  to  his  successor,  asking  for  him  the  same  cordial 
support  he  had  himself  received.  Nor  did  he  by  word 
or  act  justify  the  suspicions  of  insubordination  for 
which  some  of  his  indiscreet  adherents  had  given 
cause.  Under  the  instructions  President  Lincoln  had 
outlined  in  his  order  to  Hunter,  that  general  gave  up 
the  idea  of  indefinitely  pursuing  Price,  and  divided  the 
army  into  two  corps  of  observation,  which  were  drawn 
back  and  posted,  for  the  time  being,  at  the  two  railroad 
termini  of  Rolla  and  Sedalia,  to  be  recruited  and  pre 
pared  for  further  service. 


XVIII 

Blockade — Hatteras  Inlet — Port  Royal  Captured — The 
Trent  Affair — Lincoln  Suggests  Arbitration — Seward's 
Despatch — McClellan  at  Washington — Army  of  the  Po 
tomac — McClellan's  Quarrel  with  Scott — Retirement 
of  Scott — Lincoln's  Memorandum — "All  Quiet  on  the 
Potomac" — Conditions  in  Kentucky — Cameron's  Visit 
to  Sherman — East  Tennessee — Instructions  to  Buell — 
Buell's  Neglect — Halleck  in  Missouri 

FOLLOWING  the  fall  of  Fort  Sumter,  the  navy  of 
the  United  States  was  in  no  condition  to  enforce 
the  blockade  from  Chesapeake  Bay  to  the  Rio  Grande 
declared  by  Lincoln's  proclamation  of  April  19.  Of 
the  forty-two  vessels  then  in  commission  nearly  all 
were  on  foreign  stations.  Another  serious  cause  of 
weakness  was  that  within  a  few  days  after  the  Sumter 
attack  one  hundred  and  twenty-four  officers  of  the  navy 
resigned,  or  were  dismissed  for  disloyalty,  and  the 
number  of  such  was  doubled  before  the  fourth  of  July. 
Yet  by  the  strenuous  efforts  of  the  department  in  fit 
ting  out  ships  that  had  been  laid  up,  in  completing  those 
under  construction,  and  in  extensive  purchases  and 
arming  of  all  classes  of  vessels  that  could  be  put  to  use, 
from  screw  and  side-wheel  merchant  steamers  to  ferry 
boats  and  tugs,  a  legally  effective  blockade  was  estab 
lished  within  a  period  of  six  months.  A  considerable 
number  of  new  war-ships  was  also  immediately  placed 
under  construction.  The  special  session  of  Congress 
created  a  commission  to  study  the  subject  of  ironclads, 

244 


HATTERAS  AND  PORT  ROYAL    245 

and  on  its  recommendation  three  experimental  vessels 
of  this  class  were  placed  under  contract.  One  of  these, 
completed  early  in  the  following  year,  rendered  a  mo 
mentous  service,  hereafter  to  be  mentioned,  and  com 
pletely  revolutionized  naval  warfare. 

Meanwhile,  as  rapidly  as  vessels  could  be  gathered 
and  prepared,  the  Navy  Department  organized  effec 
tive  expeditions  to  operate  against  points  on  the  At 
lantic  coast.  On  August  29  a  small  fleet,  under  com 
mand  of  Flag  Officer  Stringham,  took  possession  of 
Hatteras  Inlet,  after  silencing  the  forts  the  insurgents 
had  erected  to  guard  the  entrance,  and  captured  twenty- 
five  guns  and  seven  hundred  prisoners.  This  success, 
achieved  without  the  loss  of  a  man  to  the  Union  fleet, 
was  of  great  importance,  opening,  as  it  did,  the  way 
for  a  succession  of  victories  in  the  interior  waters  of 
North  Carolina  early  in  the  following  year. 

A  more  formidable  expedition,  and  still  greater  suc 
cess  soon  followed.  Early  in  November,  Captain  Du- 
Pont  assembled  a  fleet  of  fifty  sail,  including  transports, 
before  Port  Royal  Sound.  Forming  a  column  of  nine 
war-ships  with  a  total  of  one  hundred  and  twelve  guns, 
the  line  steamed  by  the  mid-channel  between  Fort 
Beauregard  to  the  right,  and  Fort  Walker  to  the  left, 
the  first  of  twenty  and  the  second  of  twenty-three 
guns,  each  ship  delivering  its  fire  as  it  passed  the  forts. 
Turning  at  the  proper  point,  they  again  gave  broad 
side  after  broadside  while  steaming  out,  and  so  re 
peated  their  circular  movement.  The  battle  was  de 
cided  when,  on  the  third  round,  the  forts  failed  to 
respond  to  the  fire  of  the  ships.  When  Commander 
Rodgers  carried  and  planted  the  Stars  and  Stripes  on 
the  ramparts,  he  found  them  utterly  deserted,  every 
thing  having  been  abandoned  by  the  flying  garrisons. 
Further  reconnaissance  proved  that  the  panic  extended 


246  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

itself  over  the  whole  network  of  sea  islands  between 
Charleston  and  Savannah,  permitting  the  immediate 
occupation  of  the  entire  region,  and  affording  a  mili 
tary  base  for  both  the  navy  and  the  army  of  incalcu 
lable  advantage  in  the  further  reduction  of  the  coast. 

Another  naval  exploit,  however,  almost  at  the  same 
time,  absorbed  greater  public  attention,  and  for  a  while 
created  an  intense  degree  of  excitement  and  suspense. 
Ex-Senators  J.  M.  Mason  and  John  Slidell,  having 
been  accredited  by  the  Confederate  government  as  en 
voys  to  European  courts,  had  managed  to  elude  the 
blockade  and  reach  Havana.  Captain  Charles  Wilkes, 
commanding  the  San  Jacinto,  learning  that  they  were 
to  take  passage  for  England  on  the  British  mail 
steamer  Trent,  intercepted  that  vessel  on  November  8 
near  the  coast  of  Cuba,  took  the  rebel  emissaries  pris 
oner  by  the  usual  show  of  force,  and  brought  them  to 
the  United  States,  but  allowed  the  Trent  to  proceed  on 
her  voyage.  The  incident  and  alleged  insult  produced 
as  great  excitement  in  England  as  in  the  United  States, 
and  the  British  government  began  instant  and  signifi 
cant  preparations  for  war  for  what  it  hastily  assumed 
to  be  a  violation  of  international  law  and  an  outrage 
on  the  British  flag.  Instructions  were  sent  to  Lord 
Lyons,  the  British  minister  at  Washington,  to  demand 
the  release  of  the  prisoners  and  a  suitable  apology; 
and,  if  this  demand  were  not  complied  with  within  a 
single  week,  to  close  his  legation  and  return  to  Eng 
land. 

In  the  Northern  States  the  capture  was  greeted  with 
great  jubilation.  Captain  Wilkes  was  applauded  by  the 
press;  his  act  was  officially  approved  by  the  Secretary 
of  the  Navy,  and  the  House  of  Representatives  unani 
mously  passed  a  resolution  thanking  him  for  his  "brave, 
adroit,  and  patriotic  conduct."  While  the  President 


THE     TRENT     AFFAIR  247 

and  cabinet  shared  the  first  impulses  of  rejoicing, 
second  thoughts  impressed  them  with  the  grave  nature 
of  the  international  question  involved,  and  the  serious 
dilemma  of  disavowal  or  war  precipitated  by  the  im 
perative  British  demand.  It  was  fortunate  that  Secre 
tary  Seward  and  Lord  Lyons  were  close  personal 
friends,  and  still  more  that  though  British  public 
opinion  had  strongly  favored  the  rebellion,  the  Queen 
of  England  entertained  the  kindliest  feelings  for  the 
American  government.  Under  her  direction,  Prince 
Albert  instructed  the  British  cabinet  to  formulate  and 
present  the  demand  in  the  most  courteous  diplomatic 
language,  while,  on  their  part,  the  American  President 
and  cabinet  discussed  the  affair  in  a  temper  of  judicious 
reserve. 

President  Lincoln's  first  desire  was  to  refer  the  dif 
ficulty  to  friendly  arbitration,  and  his  mood  is  admir 
ably  expressed  in  the  autograph  experimental  draft  of 
a  despatch  suggesting  this  course. 

"The  President  is  unwilling  to  believe,"  he  wrote, 
"that  her  Majesty's  government  will  press  for  a  cate 
gorical  answer  upon  what  appears  to  him  to  be  only  a 
partial  record,  in  the  making  up  of  which  he  has  been 
allowed  no  part.  He  is  reluctant  to  volunteer  his  viewT 
of  the  case,  with  no  assurance  that  her  Majesty's  gov 
ernment  will  consent  to  hear  him ;  yet  this  much  he  di 
rects  me  to  say,  that  this  government  has  intended  no 
affront  to  the  British  flag,  or  to  the  British  nation ;  nor 
has  it  intended  to  force  into  discussion  an  embarrassing 
question ;  all  which  is  evident  by  the  fact  hereby 
asserted,  that  the  act  complained  of  was  done  by  the 
officer  without  orders  from,  or  expectation  of,  the  gov 
ernment.  But,  being  done,  it  was  no  longer  left  to  us 
to  consider  whether  we  might  not,  to  avoid  a  contro 
versy,  waive  an  unimportant  though  a  strict  right ;  be- 


248  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

cause  we,  too,  as  well  as  Great  Britain,  have  a  people 
justly  jealous  of  their  rights,  and  in  whose  presence 
our  government  could  undo  the  act  complained  of  only 
upon  a  fair  showing  that  it  was  wrong,  or  at  least  very 
questionable.  The  United  States  government  and 
people  are  still  willing  to  make  reparation  upon  such 
showing. 

"Accordingly,  I  am  instructed  by  the  President  to 
inquire  whether  her  Majesty's  government  will  hear 
the  United  States  upon  the  matter  in  question.  The 
President  desires,  among  other  things,  to  bring  into 
view,  and  have  considered,  the  existing  rebellion  in 
the  United  States;  the  position  Great  Britain  has  as 
sumed,  including  her  Majesty's  proclamation  in  rela 
tion  thereto;  the  relation  the  persons  whose  seizure 
is  the  subject  of  complaint  bore  to  the  United  States, 
and  the  object  of  their  voyage  at  the  time  they  \vere 
seized ;  the  knowledge  which  the  master  of  the  Trent 
had  of  their  relation  to  the  United  States,  and  of  the 
object  of  their  voyage,  at  the  time  he  received  them  on 
board  for  the  voyage ;  the  place  of  the  seizure ;  and  the 
precedents  and  respective  positions  assumed  in  anal 
ogous  cases  between  Great  Britain  and  the  United 
States. 

"Upon  a  submission  containing  the  foregoing  facts, 
with  those  set  forth  in  the  before-mentioned  despatch 
to  your  lordship,  together  with  all  other  facts  which 
either  party  may  deem  material,  I  am  instructed  to 
say  the  government  of  the  United  States  will,  if 
agreed  to  by  her  Majesty's  government,  go  to  such 
friendly  arbitration  as  is  usual  among  nations,  and  will 
abide  the  award." 

The  most  practised  diplomatic  pen  in  Europe  could 
not  have  written  a  more  dignified,  courteous,  or  suc 
cinct  presentation  of  the  case ;  and  yet,  under  the  neces- 


McCLELLAN  AT  WASHINGTON        249 

sities  of  the  moment,  it  was  impossible  to  adopt  this 
procedure.  Upon  full  discussion,  it  was  decided  that 
war  with  Great  Britain  must  be  avoided,  and  Mr.  Sew- 
ard  wrote  a  despatch  defending  the  course  of  Captain 
Wilkes  up  to  the  point  where  he  permitted  the  Trent 
to  proceed  on  her  voyage.  It  was  his  further  duty  to 
have  brought  her  before  a  prize  court.  Failing  in  this, 
he  had  left  the  capture  incomplete  under  rules  of  inter 
national  law,  and  the  American  government  had 
thereby  lost  the  right  and  the  legal  evidence  to  establish 
the  contraband  character  of  the  vessel  and  the  persons 
seized.  Under  the  circumstances,  the  prisoners  were 
therefore  willingly  released.  Excited  American  feel 
ing  was  grievously  disappointed  at  the  result;  but 
American  good  sense  readily  accommodated  itself  both 
to  the  correctness  of  the  law  expounded  by  the  Secre 
tary  of  State,  and  to  the  public  policy  that  averted  a 
great  international  danger;  particularly  as  this  de 
cision  forced  Great  Britain  to  depart  from  her  own 
and  to  adopt  the  American  traditions  respecting  this 
class  of  neutral  rights. 

It  has  already  been  told  how  Captain  George  B. 
McClellan  was  suddenly  raised  in  rank,  at  the  very  out 
set  of  the  war,  first  to  a  major-generalship  in  the  three 
months'  militia,  then  to  the  command  of  the  military 
department  of  the  Ohio;  from  that  to  a  major-general 
ship  in  the  regular  army ;  and  after  his  successful  cam 
paign  in  West  Virginia  was  called  to  Washington  and 
placed  in  command  of  the  Division  of  the  Potomac, 
which  comprised  all  the  troops  in  and  around  Washing 
ton,  on  both  sides  of  the  river.  Called  thus  to  the  cap 
ital  of  the  nation  to  guard  it  against  the  results  of  the 
disastrous  battle  of  Bull  Run,  and  to  organize  a  new 
army  for  extended  offensive  operations,  the  surround 
ing  conditions  naturally  suggested  to  him  that  in  all 


250  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

likelihood  he  would  play  a  conspicuous  part  in  the 
great  drama  of  the  Civil  War.  His  ambition  rose 
eagerly  to  the  prospect.  On  the  day  on  which  he  as 
sumed  command,  July  27,  he  wrote  to  his  wife: 

"I  find  myself  in  a  new  and  strange  position  here; 
President,  cabinet,  General  Scott,  and  all,  deferring  to 
me.  By  some  strange  operation  of  magic  I  seem  to 
have  become  the  power  of  the  land." 

And  three  days  later : 

"They  give  me  my  way  in  everything,  full  swing 
and  unbounded  confidence.  .  .  .  Who  would  have 
thought,  when  we  were  married,  that  I  should  so  soon 
be  called  upon  to  save  my  country?" 

And  still  a  few  days  afterward : 

"I  shall  carry  this  thing  en  grande,  and  crush  the 
rebels  in  one  campaign." 

From  the  giddy  elevation  to  which  such  an  imagi 
nary  achievement  raised  his  dreams,  there  was  but  one 
higher  step,  and  his  colossal  egotism  immediately 
mounted  to  occupy  it.  On  August  9,  just  two  weeks 
after  his  arrival  in  Washington,  he  wrote : 

"I  would  cheerfully  take  the  dictatorship  and  agree 
to  lay  down  my  life  when  the  country  is  saved ;"  while 
in  the  same  letter  he  adds,  with  the  most  na'ive  uncon 
sciousness  of  his  hallucination :  "I  am  not  spoiled  by 
my  unexpected  new  position." 

Coming  to  the  national  capital  in  the  hour  of  deep 
est  public  depression  over  the  Bull  Run  defeat,  Mc- 
Clellan  was  welcomed  by  the  President,  the  cabinet,  and 
General  Scott  with  sincere  friendship,  by  Congress 
with  a  hopeful  eagerness,  by  the  people  with  enthusi 
asm,  and  by  Washington  society  with  adulation.  Ex 
ternally  he  seemed  to  justify  such  a  greeting.  He  was 
young,  handsome,  accomplished,  genial  and  winning 
in  conversation  and  manner.  He  at  once  manifested 


ARMY   OF   THE   POTOMAC  251 

great  industry  and  quick  decision,  and  speedily  ex 
hibited  a  degree  of  ability  in  army  organization  which 
was  not  equaled  by  any  officer  during  the  Civil  War. 
Under  his  eye  the  stream  of  the  new  three  years'  regi 
ments  pouring  into  the  city  went  to  their  camps,  fell 
into  brigades  and  divisions,  were  supplied  with  equip 
ments,  horses,  and  batteries,  and  underwent  the  routine 
of  drill,  tactics,  and  reviews,  which,  without  the  least 
apparent  noise  or  friction,  in  three  months  made  the 
Army  of  the  Potomac  a  perfect  fighting  machine  of 
over  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  men  and  more 
than  two  hundred  guns. 

Recognizing  his  ability  in  this  work,  the  govern 
ment  had  indeed  given  him  its  full  confidence,  and  per 
mitted  him  to  exercise  almost  unbounded  authority; 
which  he  fully  utilized  in  favoring  his  personal  friends, 
and  drawing  to  himself  the  best  resources  of  the  whole 
country  in  arms,  supplies,  and  officers  of  education  and 
experience.  For  a  while  his  outward  demeanor  indi 
cated  respect  and  gratitude  for  the  promotion  and 
liberal  favors  bestowed  upon  him.  But  his  phenomenal 
rise  was  fatal  to  his  usefulness.  The  dream  that  he  was 
to  be  the  sole  savior  of  his  country,  announced  confi 
dentially  to  his  wife  just  two  weeks  after  his  arrival 
in  Washington,  never  again  left  him  so  long  as  he  con 
tinued  in  command.  Coupled  with  this  dazzling  vision, 
however,  was  soon  developed  the  tormenting  twofold 
hallucination :  first,  that  everybody  was  conspiring  to 
thwart  him ;  and,  second,  that  the  enemy  had  from 
double  to  quadruple  numbers  to  defeat  him. 

For  the  first  month  he  could  not  sleep  for  the  night 
mare  that  Beauregard's  demoralized  army  had  by  a 
sudden  bound  from  Manassas  seized  the  city  of  Wash 
ington.  He  immediately  began  a  quarrel  with  General 
Scott,  which,  by  the  first  of  November,  drove  the  old 


252  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

hero  into  retirement  and  out  of  his  pathway.  The 
cabinet  members  who,  wittingly  or  unwittingly,  had 
encouraged  him  in  this  he  some  weeks  later  stigma 
tized  as  a  set  of  geese.  Seeing  that  President  Lincoln 
was  kind  and  unassuming  in  discussing  military  ques 
tions,  McClellan  quickly  contracted  the  habit  of  ex 
pressing  contempt  for  him  in  his  confidential  letters; 
and  the  feeling  rapidly  grew  until  it  reached  a  mark  of 
open  disrespect.  The  same  trait  manifested  itself  in  his 
making  exclusive  confidants  of  only  two  or  three  of 
his  subordinate  generals,  and  ignoring  the  counsel  of 
all  the  others;  and  when,  later  on,  Congress  appointed 
a  standing  committee  of  leading  senators  and  repre 
sentatives  to  examine  into  the  conduct  of  the  war,  he 
placed  himself  in  a  similar  attitude  respecting  their 
inquiry  and  advice. 

McClellan's  activity  and  judgment  as  an  army  or 
ganizer  naturally  created  great  hopes  that  he  would  be 
equally  efficient  as  a  commander  in  the  field.  But  these 
hopes  were  grievously  disappointed.  To  his  first  great 
defect  of  estimating  himself  as  the  sole  savior  of  the 
country,  must  at  once  be  added  the  second,  of  his  utter 
inability  to  form  any  reasonable  judgment  of  the 
strength  of  the  enemy  in  his  front.  On  September  8, 
when  the  Confederate  army  at  Manassas  numbered 
forty-one  thousand,  he  rated  it  at  one  hundred  and 
thirty  thousand.  By  the  end  of  October  that  estimate 
had  risen  to  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand,  to  meet 
which  he  asked  that  his  own  force  should  be  raised 
to  an  aggregate  of  two  hundred  and  forty  thousand, 
with  a  total  of  effectives  of  two  hundred  and  eight 
thousand,  and  four  hundred  and  eighty-eight  guns. 
He  suggested  that  to  gather  this  force  all  other  points 
should  be  left  on  the  defensive;  that  the  Army  of  the 
Potomac  held  the  fate  of  the  country  in  its  hands ;  that 


RETIREMENT  OF  SCOTT  253 

the  advance  should  not  be  postponed  beyond  November 
25 ;  and  that  a  single  will  should  direct  the  plan  of  ac 
complishing  a  crushing  defeat  of  the  rebel  army  at 
Manassas. 

On  the  first  of  November  the  President,  yielding  at 
last  to  General  Scott's  urgent  solicitation,  issued  the 
orders  placing  him  on  the  retired  list,  and  in  his  stead 
appointing  General  McClellan  to  the  command  of  all 
the  armies.  The  administration  indulged  the  expecta 
tion  that  at  last  "The  Young  Napoleon,"  as  the  news 
papers  often  called  him,  would  take  advantage  of  the 
fine  autumn  weather,  and,  by  a  bold  move  with  his  sin 
gle  will  and  his  immense  force,  outnumbering  the  en 
emy  nearly  four  to  one,  would  redeem  his  promise  to 
crush  the  army  at  Manassas  and  "save  the  country." 
But  the  November  days  came  and  went,  as  the  October 
days  had  come  and  gone.  McClellan  and  his  brilliant 
staff  galloped  unceasingly  from  camp  to  camp,  and 
review  followed  review,  while  autumn  imperceptibly 
gave  place  to  the  cold  and  storms  of  winter;  and  still 
there  was  no  sign  of  forward  movement. 

Under  his  own  growing  impatience,  as  well  as  that 
of  the  public,  the  President,  about  the  first  of  December, 
inquired  pointedly,  in  a  memorandum  suggesting  a  plan 
of  campaign,  how  long  it  would  require  to  actually  get 
in  motion.  McClellan  answered:  "By  December  15, 
— probably  25";  and  put  aside  the  President's  sugges 
tion  by  explaining :  "I  have  now  my  mind  actively 
turned  toward  another  plan  of  campaign  that  I  do  not 
think  at  all  anticipated  by  the  enemy,  nor  by  many  of 
our  own  people." 

December  25  came,  as  November  25  had  come,  and 
still  there  was  no  plan,  no  preparation,  no  movement. 
Then  McClellan  fell  seriously  ill.  By  a  spontaneous 
and  most  natural  impulse,  the  soldiers  of  the  various 


254  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

camps  began  the  erection  of  huts  to  shelter  them  from 
snow  and  storm.  In  a  few  weeks  the  Army  of  the  Po 
tomac  was  practically,  if  not  by  order,  in  winter  quar 
ters;  and  day  after  day  the  monotonous  telegraphic 
phrase  "All  quiet  on  the  Potomac"  was  read  from 
Northern  newspapers  in  Northern  homes,  until  by  mere 
iteration  it  degenerated  from  an  expression  of  deep  dis 
appointment  to  a  note  of  sarcastic  criticism. 

While  so  unsatisfactory  a  condition  of  affairs  existed 
in  the  first  great  military  field  east  of  the  Alleghanies, 
the  outlook  was  quite  as  unpromising  both  in  the 
second — between  the  Alleghanies  and  the  Mississippi 
—and  in  the  third — west  of  the  Mississippi.  When 
the  Confederates,  about  September  i,  1861,  invaded 
Kentucky,  they  stationed  General  Pillow  at  the 
strongly  fortified  town  of  Columbus  on  the  Mississippi 
River,  with  about  six  thousand  men;  General  Buckner 
at  Bowling  Green,  on  the  railroad  north  of  Nashville, 
with  five  thousand;  and  General  Zollicoffer,  with  six 
regiments,  in  eastern  Kentucky,  fronting  Cumberland 
Gap.  Up  to  that  time  there  were  no  Union  troops  in 
Kentucky,  except  a  few  regiments  of  Home  Guards. 
Now,  however,  the  State  legislature  called  for  active 
help;  and  General  Anderson,  exercising  nominal  com 
mand  from  Cincinnati,  sent  Brigadier-General  Sher 
man  to  Nashville  to  confront  Buckner,  and  Brigadier- 
General  Thomas  to  Camp  Dick  Robinson,  to  confront 
Zollicoffer. 

Neither  side  was  as  yet  in  a  condition  of  force  and 
preparation  to  take  the  aggressive.  When,  a  month 
later,  Anderson,  on  account  of  ill  health  turned  over 
the  command  to  Sherman,  the  latter  had  gathered  only 
about  eighteen  thousand  men,  and  was  greatly  dis 
couraged  by  the  task  of  defending  three  hundred  miles 
of  frontier  with  that  small  force.  In  an  interview  with 


BUELL  SENT  TO  KENTUCKY    255 

Secretary  of  War  Cameron,  who  called  upon  him  on 
his  return  from  Fremont's  camp,  about  the  middle  of 
October,  he  strongly  urged  that  he  needed  for  immedi 
ate  defense  sixty  thousand,  and  for  ultimate  offense 
"two  hundred  thousand  before  we  were  done.5' 
' 'Great  God !"  exclaimed  Cameron,  " where  are  they  to 
come  from?"  Both  Sherman's  demand  and  Cameron's 
answer  were  a  pertinent  comment  on  McClellan's  policy 
of  collecting  the  whole  military  strength  of  the  country 
at  Washington  to  fight  the  one  great  battle  for  which 
he  could  never  get  ready. 

Sherman  was  so  distressed  by  the  seeming  magni 
tude  of  his  burden  that  he  soon  asked  to  be  relieved ; 
and  when  Brigadier-General  Buell  was  sent  to  succeed 
him  in  command  of  that  part  of  Kentucky  lying  east 
of  the  Cumberland  River,  it  was  the  expectation  of  the 
President  that  he  would  devote  his  main  attention  and 
energy  to  the  accomplishment  of  a  specific  object  which 
Mr.  Lincoln  had  very  much  at  heart. 

Ever  since  the  clays  in  June,  when  President  Lincoln 
had  presided  over  the  council  of  war  which  discussed 
and  decided  upon  the  Bull  Run  campaign,  he  had  de 
voted  every  spare  moment  of  his  time  to  the  study  of 
such  military  books  and  leading  principles  of  the  art 
of  war  as  would  aid  him  in  solving  questions  that 
must  necessarily  come  to  himself  for  final  decision. 
His  acute  perceptions,  retentive  memory,  and  unusual 
power  of  logic  enabled  him  to  make  rapid  progress 
in  the  acquisition  of  the  fixed  and  accepted  rules  on 
which  military  writers  agree.  In  this,  as  in  other 
sciences,  the  main  difficulty,  of  course,  lies  in  applying 
fixed  theories  to  variable  conditions.  When,  however, 
we  remember  that  at  the  outbreak  of  hostilities  all  the 
great  commanders  of  the  Civil  War  had  experience 
only  as  captains  and  lieutenants,  it  is  not  strange 


256  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

that  in  speculative  military  problems  the  President's 
mature  reasoning  powers  should  have  gained  almost  as 
rapidly  by  observation  and  criticism  as  theirs  by  prac 
tice  and  experiment.  The  mastery  he  attained  of  the 
difficult  art,  and  how  intuitively  correct  was  his  grasp 
of  military  situations,  has  been  attested  since  in  the 
enthusiastic  admiration  of  brilliant  technical  students, 
amply  fitted  by  training  and  intellect  to  express  an 
opinion,  whose  comment  does  not  fall  short  of  declar 
ing  Mr.  Lincoln  "the  ablest  strategist  of  the  war." 

The  President  had  early  discerned  what  must  be 
come  the  dominating  and  decisive  lines  of  advance  in 
gaining  and  holding  military  control  of  the  Southern 
States.  Only  two  days  after  the  battle  of  Bull  Run, 
he  had  written  a  memorandum  suggesting  three  prin 
cipal  objects  for  the  army  when  reorganized :  First, 
to  gather  a  force  to  menace  Richmond ;  second,  a  move 
ment  from  Cincinnati  upon  Cumberland  Gap  and  East 
Tennessee;  third,  an  expedition  from  Cairo  against 
Memphis.  In  his  eyes,  the  second  of  these  objectives 
never  lost  its  importance;  and  it  \vas  in  fact  substan 
tially  adopted  by  indirection  and  by  necessity  in  the 
closing  periods  of  the  war.  The  eastern  third  of  the 
State  of  Tennessee  remained  from  the  first  stubbornly 
and  devotedly  loyal  to  the  Union.  At  an  election  on 
June  8,  1 86 1,  the  people  of  twenty-nine  counties,  by 
more  than  two  to  one,  voted  against  joining  the  Con 
federacy;  and  the  most  rigorous  military  repression 
by  the  orders  of  Jefferson  Davis  and  Governor  Harris 
was  necessary  to  prevent  a  general  uprising  against  the 
rebellion. 

The  sympathy  of  the  President,  even  more  than  that 
of  the  whole  North,  went  out  warmly  to  these  unfor 
tunate  Tennesseeans,  and  he  desired  to  convert  their 
mountain  fastnesses  into  an  impregnable  patriotic 


EAST  TENNESSEE  257 

stronghold.  Had  his  advice  been  followed,  it  would 
have  completely  severed  railroad  communication,  by 
way  of  the  Shenandoah  valley,  Knoxville,  and  Chat 
tanooga,  between  Virginia  and  the  Gulf  States,  ac 
complishing  in  the  winter  of  1861  what  was  not  at 
tained  until  two  years  later.  Mr.  Lincoln  urged  this 
in  a  second  memorandum,  made  late  in  September ;  and 
seeing  that  the  principal  objection  to  it  lay  in  the  long 
and  difficult  line  of  land  transportation,  his  message  to 
Congress  of  December' 3,  1861,  recommended,  as  a  mil 
itary  measure,  the  construction  of  a  railroad  to  connect 
Cincinnati,  by  way  of  Lexington,  Kentucky,  with  that 
mountain  region. 

A  few  days  after  the  message,  he  personally  went 
to  the  President's  room  in  the  Capitol  building,  and 
calling  around  him  a  number  of  leading  senators  and 
representatives,  and  pointing  out  on  a  map  before  them 
the  East  Tennessee  region,  said  to  them  in  substance : 

I  am  thoroughly  convinced  that  the  closing  struggle 
of  the  war  will  occur  somewhere  in  this  mountain 
country.  By  our  superior  numbers  and  strength  we 
will  everywhere  drive  the  rebel  armies  back  from  the 
level  districts  lying  along  the  coast,  from  those  lying 
south  of  the  Ohio  River,  and  from  those  lying  east  of 
the  Mississippi  River.  Yielding  to  our  superior  force, 
they  will  gradually  retreat  to  the  more  defensible 
mountain  districts,  and  make  their  final  stand  in  that 
part  of  the  South  where  the  seven  States  of  Virginia, 
North  Carolina,  South  Carolina,  Georgia,  Tennessee, 
Kentucky,  and  West  Virginia  come  together.  The 
population  there  is  overwhelmingly  and  devotedly 
loyal  to  the  Union.  The  despatches  from  Brigadier- 
General  Thomas  of  October  28  and  November  5 
show  that,  with  four  additional  good  regiments,  he  is 
willing  to  undertake  the  campaign  and  is  confident 

17 


258  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

he  can  take  immediate  possession.  Once  established, 
the  people  will  rally  to  his  support,  and  by  building 
a  railroad,  over  which  to  forward  him  regular  supplies 
and  needed  reinforcements  from  time  to  time,  we  can 
hold  it  against  all  attempts  to  dislodge  us,  and  at  the 
same  time  menace  the  enemy  in  any  one  of  the  States 
I  have  named. 

While  his  hearers  listened  with  interest,  it  was  evi 
dent  that  their  minds  were  still  full  of  the  prospect 
of  a  great  battle  in  Virginia,  the  capture  of  Richmond, 
and  an  early  suppression  of  the  rebellion.  Railroad 
building  appeared  to  them  altogether  too  slow  an  opera 
tion  of  war.  To  show  how  sagacious  was  the  Presi 
dent's  advice,  we  may  anticipate  by  recalling  that  in  the 
following  summer  General  Buell  spent  as  much  time, 
money,  and  military  strength  in  his  attempted  march 
from  Corinth  to  East  Tennessee  as  would  have  amply 
sufficed  to  build  the  line  from  Lexington  to  Knoxville 
recommended  by  Mr.  Lincoln — the  general's  effort  re 
sulting  only  in  his  being  driven  back  to  Louisville; 
that  in  1863,  Burnside,  under  greater  difficulties,  made 
the  march  and  successfully  held  Knoxville,  even  with 
out  a  railroad,  which  Thomas  with  a  few  regiments 
could  have  accomplished  in  1861 ;  and  that  in  the  final 
collapse  of  the  rebellion,  in  the  spring  of  1865,  the 
beaten  armies  of  both  Johnston  and  Lee  attempted  to 
retreat  for  a  last  stand  to  this  same  mountain  region 
which  Mr.  Lincoln  pointed  out  in  December,  1861. 

Though  the  President  received  no  encouragement 
from  senators  and  representatives  in  his  plan  to  take 
possession  of  East  Tennessee,  that  object  was  specially 
enjoined  in  the  instructions  to  General  Buell  when  he 
was  sent  to  command  in  Kentucky. 

"It  so  happens  that  a  large  majority  of  the  inhab 
itants  of  eastern  Tennessee  are  in  favor  of  the  Union; 


EAST  TENNESSEE  259 

it  therefore  seems  proper  that  you  should  remain  on 
the  defensive  on  the  line  from  Louisville  to  Nashville, 
while  you  throw  the  mass  of  your  forces  by  rapid 
marches  by  Cumberland  Gap  or  Walker's  Gap  on 
Knoxville,  in  order  to  occupy  the  railroad  at  that  point, 
and  thus  enable  the  loyal  citizens  of  eastern  Tennessee 
to  rise,  while  you  at  the  same  time  cut  off  the  railway 
communication  between  eastern  Virginia  and  the  Mis 
sissippi." 

Three  times  within  the  same  month  McClellan  re 
peated  this  injunction  to  Buell  with  additional  em 
phasis.  Senator  Andrew  Johnson  and  Representative 
Horace  Maynard  telegraphed  him  from  Washington : 

"Our  people  are  oppressed  and  pursued  as  beasts 
of  the  forest;  the  government  must  come  to  their  re 
lief." 

Buell  replied,  keeping  the  word  of  promise  to  the 
ear,  but,  with  his  ambition  fixed  on  a  different  cam 
paign,  gradually  but  doggedly  broke  it  to  the  hope. 
When,  a  month  later,  he  acknowledged  that  his  prepa 
rations  and  intent  were  to  move  against  Nashville,  the 
President  wrote  him : 

"Of  the  two,  I  would  rather  have  a  point  on  the  rail 
road  south  of  Cumberland  Gap  than  Nashville.  First, 
because  it  cuts  a  great  artery  of  the  enemy's  communi 
cation,  which  Nashville  does  not;  and.  secondly,  be 
cause  it  is  in  the  midst  of  loyal  people,  who  would 
rally  around  it,  while  Nashville  is  not.  .  .  .  But 
my  distress  is  that  our  friends  in  East  Tennessee  are 
being  hanged  and  driven  to  despair,  and  even  now,  I 
fear,  are  thinking  of  taking  rebel  arms  for  the  sake 
of  personal  protection.  In  this  we  lose  the  most  valu 
able  stake  we  have  in  the  South." 

McClellan's  comment  amounted  to  a  severe  censure, 
and  this  was  quickly  followed  by  an  almost  positive 


260  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

command  to  "advance  on  eastern  Tennessee  at  once." 
Again  Buell  promised  compliance,  only,  however,  again 
to  report  in  a  few  weeks  his  conviction  "that  an  advance 
into  East  Tennessee  is  impracticable  at  this  time  on 
any  scale  which  would  be  sufficient."  It  is  difficult  to 
speculate  upon  the  advantages  lost  by  this  unwilling 
ness  of  a  commander  to  obey  instructions.  To  say 
nothing  of  the  strategical  value  of  East  Tennessee  to 
the  Union,  the  fidelity  of  its  people  is  shown  in  the 
reports  sent  to  the  Confederate  government  that  "the 
whole  country  is  now  in  a  state  of  rebellion" ;  that 
"civil  war  has  broken  out  in  East  Tennessee" ;  and  that 
"they  look  for  the  reestablishment  of  the  Federal  au 
thority  in  the  South  with  as  much  confidence  as  the 
Jews  look  for  the  coming  of  the  Messiah." 

Henry  W.  Halleck,  born  in  1815,  graduated  from 
West  Point  in  1839,  who,  after  distinguished  service 
in  the  Mexican  war,  had  been  brevettecl  captain  of 
Engineers,  but  soon  afterward  resigned  from  the  army 
to  pursue  the  practice  of  law  in  San  Francisco,  was, 
perhaps,  the  best  professionally  equipped  officer  among 
the  number  of  those  called  by  General  Scott  in  the 
summer  of  1861  to  assume  important  command  in  the 
Union  army.  It  is  probable  that  Scott  intended  he 
should  succeed  himself  as  general-in-chief ;  but  when  he 
reached  Washington  the  autumn  was  already  late,  and 
because  of  Fremont's  conspicuous  failure  it  seemed 
necessary  to  send  Halleck  to  the  Department  of  the 
Missouri,  which,  as  reconstituted,  was  made  to  include, 
in  addition  to  several  northwestern  States,  Missouri 
and  Arkansas,  and  so  much  of  Kentucky  as  lay  west 
of  the  Cumberland  River.  This  change  of  department 
lines  indicates  the  beginning  of  what  soon  became  a 
dominant  feature  of  military  operations;  namely,  that 
instead  of  the  vast  regions  lying  west  of  the  Mississippi, 


HALLECK   IN   MISSOURI  261 

the  great  river  itself,  and  the  country  lying  immedi 
ately  adjacent  to  it  on  either  side,  became  the  third 
principal  field  of  strategy  and  action,  under  the  neces 
sity  of  opening  and  holding  it  as  a  great  military  and 
commercial  highway. 

While  the  intention  of  the  government  to  open  the 
Mississippi  River  by  a  powerful  expedition  received 
additional  emphasis  through  Halleck's  appointment, 
that  general  found  no  immediate  means  adequate  to  the 
task  when  he  assumed  command  at  St.  Louis.  Fre 
mont's  regime  had  left  the  whole  department  in  the 
most  deplorable  confusion.  Halleck  reported  that  he 
had  no  army,  but,  rather,  a  military  rabble  to  com 
mand,  and  for  some  weeks  devoted  himself  with  energy 
and  success  to  bringing  order  out  of  the  chaos  left  him 
by  his  predecessor.  A  large  element  of  his  difficulty 
lay  in  the  fact  that  the  population  of  the  whole  State 
was  tainted  with  disloyalty  to  a  degree  which  ren 
dered  Missouri  less  a  factor  in  the  larger  questions  of 
general  army  operations,  than  from  the  beginning  to 
the  end  of  the  war  a  local  district  of  bitter  and  relent 
less  factional  hatred  and  guerrilla  or,  as  the  term  was 
constantly  employed,  "bushwhacking"  warfare,  inten 
sified  and  kept  alive  by  annual  roving  Confederate 
incursions  from  Arkansas  and  the  Indian  Territory 
in  desultory  summer  campaigns. 


XIX 


Lincoln  Directs  Cooperation — Halleck  andBuell — Ulysses 
S.  Grant — Grant's  Demonstration — Victory  at  Mill 
River — Fort  Henry— Fort  Donelson — Buell's  Tardi 
ness — Halleck 's  Activity — Victory  of  Pea  Ridge — Hal 
leck  Receives  General  Command — Pittsbnrg  Landing 
— Island  No.  10 — Halleck's  Corinth  Campaign — Hal- 
leek's  Mistakes 

nPOWARD  the  end  of  December,  1861,  the  pros- 
A  pects  of  the  administration  became  very  gloomy. 
McClellan  had  indeed  organized  a  formidable  army  at 
Washington,  but  it  had  done  nothing  to  efface  the 
memory  of  the  Bull  Run  defeat.  On  the  contrary, 
a  practical  blockade  of  the  Potomac  by  rebel  batteries 
on  the  Virginia  shore,  and  another  small  but  irritating 
defeat  at  Ball's  Bluff,  greatly  heightened  public  im 
patience.  The  necessary  surrender  of  Mason  and 
Slidell  to  England  was  exceedingly  unpalatable.  Gov 
ernment  expenditures  had  risen  to  $2,000,000  a  day, 
and  a  financial  crisis  was  imminent.  Buell  would  not 
move  into  East  Tennessee,  and  Halleck  seemed  pow 
erless  in  Missouri.  Added  to  this,  McClellan's  illness 
completed  a  stagnation  of  military  affairs  both  east  and 
west.  Congress  was  clamoring  for  results,  and  its 
joint  Committee  on  the  Conduct  of  the  War  was  push 
ing  a  searching  inquiry  into  the  causes  of  previous 
defeats. 

To  remove  this  inertia,  President  Lincoln  directed 
specific  questions  to  the  Western  commanders.     "Are 

262 


HALLECK  AND  BUELL  263 

General  Buell  and  yourself  in  concert?"  he  telegraphed 
Halleck  on  December  31.  And  next  day  he  wrote: 

"I  am  very  anxious  that,  in  case  of  General  Buell's 
moving  toward  Nashville,  the  enemy  shall  not  be 
greatly  reinforced,  and  I  think  there  is  clanger  he  will 
be  from  Columbus.  It  seems  to  me  that  a  real  or 
feigned  attack  on  Columbus  from  up-river  at  the  same 
time  would  either  prevent  this,  or  compensate  for  it  by 
throwing  Columbus  into  our  hands." 

Similar  questions  also  went  to  Buell,  and  their  re 
plies  showed  that  no  concert,  arrangement,  or  plans 
existed,  and  that  Halleck  was  not  ready  to  cooperate. 
The  correspondence  started  by  the  President's  inquiry 
for  the  first  time  clearly  brought  out  an  estimate  of 
the  Confederate  strength  opposed  to  a  southward 
movement  in  the  West.  Since  the  Confederate  inva 
sion  of  Kentucky  on  September  4,  the  rebels  had  so 
strongly  fortified  Columbus  on  the  Mississippi  River 
that  it  came  to  be  called  the  "Gibraltar  of  the  West," 
and  now  had  a  garrison  of  twenty  thousand  to  hold  it ; 
while  General  Buckner  was  supposed  to  have  a  force 
of  forty  thousand  at  Bowling  Green  on  the  railroad 
between  Louisville  and  Nashville.  For  more  than  a 
month  Buell  and  Halleck  had  been  aware  that  a  joint 
river  and  land  expedition  southward  up  the  Tennessee 
or  the  Cumberland  River,  which  would  outflank  both 
positions  and  cause  their  evacuation,  was  practicable 
with  but  little  opposition.  Yet  neither  Buell  nor  Hal 
leck  had  exchanged  a  word  about  it,  or  made  the  slight 
est  preparation  to  begin  it ;  each  being  busy  in  his  own 
field,  and  with  his  own  plans.  Even  now,  when  the 
President  had  started  the  subject,  Halleck  replied  that 
it  would  be  bad  strategy  for  himself  to  move  against 
Columbus,  or  Buell  against  Bowling  Green;  but  he  had 
nothing  to  say  about  a  Tennessee  River  expedition,  or 


264  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

cooperation  with  Buell  to  effect  it,  except  by  indirectly 
complaining  that  to  withdraw  troops  from  Missouri 
would  risk  the  loss  of  that  State. 

The  President,  however,  was  no  longer  satisfied 
with  indecision  and  excuses,  and  telegraphed  to  Buell 
on  January  7 : 

"Please  name  as  early  a  day  as  you  safely  can  on  or 
before  which  you  can  be  ready  to  move  southward  in 
concert  with  Major-General  Halleck.  Delay  is  ruining 
us,  and  it  is  indispensable  for  me  to  have  something 
definite.  I  send  a  like  despatch  to  Major-General 
Halleck." 

To  this  Buell  made  no  direct  reply,  while  Halleck 
answered  that  he  had  asked  Buell  to  designate  a  date 
for  a  demonstration,  and  explained  two  days  later : 
"I  can  make,  with  the  gunboats  and  available  troops, 
a  pretty  formidable  demonstration,  but  no  real  attack." 
In  point  of  fact,  Halleck  had  on  the  previous  day,  Jan 
uary  6,  written  to  Brigadier-General  U.  S.  Grant :  "I 
wish  you  to  make  a  demonstration  in  force" ;  and  he 
added  full  details,  to  which  Grant  responded  on  Jan 
uary  8 :  "Your  instructions  of  the  sixth  were  received 
this  morning,  and  immediate  preparations  made  for 
carrying  them  out" ;  also  adding  details  on  his  part. 

Ulysses  S.  Grant  was  born  on  April  27,  1822,  was 
graduated  from  West  Point  in  1843,  and  brevetted  cap 
tain  for  gallant  conduct  in  the  Mexican  War;  but  re 
signed  from  the  army  and  was  engaged  with  his  father 
in  a  leather  store  at  Galena,  Illinois,  when  the  Civil  War 
broke  out.  Employed  by  the  governor  of  Illinois  a  few 
weeks  at  Springfield  to  assist  in  organizing  militia  regi 
ments  under  the  President's  first  call,  Grant  wrote  a  let 
ter  to  the  War  Department  at  Washington  tendering 
his  services,  and  saying:  "I  feel  myself  competent  to 
command  a  regiment,  if  the  President  in  his  judgment 


GRANT'S  DEMONSTRATION  265 

should  see  fit  to  intrust  one  to  me."  For  some  reason, 
never  explained,  this  letter  remained  unanswered, 
though  the  department  was  then  and  afterward  in  con 
stant  need  of  educated  and  experienced  officers.  A  few 
weeks  later,  however,  Governor  Yates  commissioned 
him  colonel  of  one  of  the  Illinois  three  years'  regi 
ments.  From  that  time  until  the  end  of  1861,  Grant, 
by  constant  and  specially  meritorious  service,  rose  in 
rank  to  brigadier-general  and  to  the  command  of  the 
important  post  of  Cairo,  Illinois,  having  meanwhile, 
on  November  7,  won  the  battle  of  Belmont  on  the  Mis 
souri  shore  opposite  Columbus. 

The  "demonstration"  ordered  by  Halleck  was  prob 
ably  intended  only  as  a  passing  show  of  activity;  but 
it  was  executed  by  Grant,  though  under  strict  orders 
to  "avoid  a  battle,"  with  a  degree  of  promptness  and 
earnestness  that  drew  after  it  momentous  consequences. 
He  pushed  a  strong  reconnaissance  by  eight  thousand 
men  within  a  mile  or  two  of  Columbus,  and  sent  three 
gunboats  up  the  Tennessee  River,  which  drew  the  fire 
of  Fort  Henry.  The  results  of  the  combined  expedi 
tion  convinced  Grant  that  a  real  movement  in  that 
direction  was  practicable,  and  he  hastened  to  St.  Louis 
to  lay  his  plan  personally  before  Halleck.  At  first 
that  general  would  scarcely  listen  to  it;  but,  returning 
to  Cairo,  Grant  urged  it  again  and  again,  and  the 
rapidly  changing  military  conditions  soon  caused  Hal 
leck  to  realize  its  importance. 

Within  a  few  days,  several  items  of  interesting  infor 
mation  reached  Halleck :  that  General  Thomas,  in 
eastern  Kentucky,  had  won  a  victory  over  the  rebel 
General  Zollicoffer,  capturing  his  fortified  camp  on 
Cumberland  River,  annihilating  his  army  of  over  ten 
regiments,  and  fully  exposing  Cumberland  Gap;  that 
the  Confederates  were  about  to  throw  strong  reinforce- 


266  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

ments  into  Columbus;  that  seven  formidable  Union 
ironclad  river  gunboats  were  ready  for  service;  and 
that  a  rise  of  fourteen  feet  had  taken  place  in  the  Ten 
nessee  River,  greatly  weakening  the  rebel  batteries  on 
that  stream  and  the  Cumberland.  The  advantages  on 
the  one  hand,  and  the  dangers  on  the  other,  which  these 
reports  indicated,  moved  Halleck  to  a  sudden  decision. 
When  Grant,  on  January  28,  telegraphed  him :  "With 
permission,  I  will  take  Fort  Henry  on  the  Tennessee, 
and  establish  and  hold  a  large  camp  there,"  Halleck 
responded  on  the  thirtieth :  "Make  your  preparations 
to  take  and  hold  Fort  Henry." 

It  would  appear  that  Grant's  preparations  were  al 
ready  quite  complete  when  he  received  written  in 
structions  by  mail  on  February  i,  for  on  the  next  day 
he  started  fifteen  thousand  men  on  transports,  and  on 
February  4  himself  followed  with  seven  gunboats 
under  command  of  Commodore  Foote.  Two  days 
later,  Grant  had  the  satisfaction  of  sending  a  double 
message  in  return  :  "Fort  Henry  is  ours.  ...  I 
shall  take  and  destroy  Fort  Donelson  on  the  eighth." 

Fort  Henry  had  been  an  easy  victory.  The  rebel 
commander,  convinced  that  he  could  not  defend  the 
place,  had  early  that  morning  sent  away  his  garrison 
of  three  thousand  on  a  retreat  to  Fort  Donelson,  and 
simply  held  out  during  a  two  hours'  bombardment 
until  they  could  escape  capture.  To  take  Fort  Donel 
son  was  a  more  serious  enterprise.  That  stronghold, 
lying  twelve  miles  away  on  the  Cumberland  River,  was 
a  much  larger  work,  with  a  garrison  of  six  thousand, 
and  armed  with  seventeen  heavy  and  forty-eight  field 
guns.  If  Grant  could  have  marched  immediately  to  an 
attack  of  the  combined  garrisons,  there  would  have 
been  a  chance  of  quick  success.  But  the  high  water 
presented  unlooked-for  obstacles,  and  nearly  a  week 


FORT   DONELSON  267 

elapsed  before  his  army  began  stretching  itself  cau 
tiously  around  the  three  miles  of  Donelson's  intrench- 
ments.  During  this  delay,  the  conditions  became 
greatly  changed.  When  the  Confederate  General 
Albert  Sidney  Johnston  received  news  that  Fort  Henry 
had  fallen,  he  held  a  council  at  Bowling  Green  with  his 
subordinate  generals  Hardee  and  Beauregard,  and  see 
ing  that  the  Union  success  would,  if  not  immediately 
counteracted,  render  both  Nashville  and  Columbus  un 
tenable,  resolved,  to  use  his  own  language,  "To  de 
fend  Nashville  at  Donelson." 

An  immediate  retreat  was  begun  from  Bowling 
Green  to  Nashville,  and  heavy  reinforcements  were 
ordered  to  the  garrison  of  Fort  Donelson.  It  happened, 
therefore,  that  when  Grant  was  ready  to  begin  his  as 
sault,  the  Confederate  garrison  with  its  reinforcements 
outnumbered  his  entire  army.  To  increase  the  discour 
agement,  the  attack  by  gunboats  on  the  Cumberland 
River  on  the  afternoon  of  February  14  was  repulsed, 
seriously  damaging  two  of  them,  and  a  heavy  sortie 
from  the  fort  threw  the  right  of  Grant's  investing  line 
into  disorder.  Fortunately,  General  Halleck  at  St. 
Louis  strained  all  his  energies  to  send  reinforcements, 
and  these  arrived  in  time  to  restore  Grant's  advantage 
in  numbers. 

Serious  disagreement  among  the  Confederate  com 
manders  also  hastened  the  fall  of  the  place.  On  Feb 
ruary  1 6,  General  Buckner,  to  whom  the  senior  officers 
had  turned  over  the  command,  proposed  an  armistice, 
and  the  appointment  of  commissioners  to  agree  on 
terms  of  capitulation.  To  this  Grant  responded  with 
a  characteristic  spirit  of  determination :  "No  terms 
except  unconditional  and  immediate  surrender  can  be 
accepted.  I  propose  to  move  immediately  upon  your 
works."  Buckner  complained  that  the  terms  were  un- 


268  ABRAHAM   LINCOLN 

generous  and  unchivalric,  but  that  necessity  compelled 
him  to  accept  them;  and  Grant  telegraphed  Halleck  on 
February  16:  "We  have  taken  Fort  Donelson,  and 
from  twelve  to  fifteen  thousand  prisoners."  The  senior 
Confederate  generals,  Pillow  and  Floyd,  and  a  portion 
of  the  garrison  had  escaped  by  the  Cumberland  River 
during  the  preceding  night. 

Since  the  fall  of  Fort  Llenry  on  February  6,  a  lively 
correspondence  had  been  going  on,  in  which  General 
Halleck  besought  Buell  to  come  with  his  available 
forces,  assist  in  capturing  Donelson,  and  command 
the  column  up  the  Cumberland  to  cut  off  both  Colum 
bus  and  Nashville.  President  Lincoln,  scanning  the 
news  with  intense  solicitude,  and  losing  no  opportu 
nity  to  urge  effective  cooperation,  telegraphed  Halleck : 

"You  have  Fort  Donelson  safe,  unless  Grant  shall  be 
overwhelmed  from  outside;  to  prevent  which  latter 
will,  I  think,  require  all  the  vigilance,  energy,  and  skill 
of  yourself  and  Buell,  acting  in  full  cooperation.  Co 
lumbus  will  not  get  at  Grant,  but  the  force  from  Bowl 
ing  Green  will.  They  hold  the  railroad  from  Bowling 
Green  to  within  a  few  miles  of  Fort  Donelson,  with 
the  bridge  at  Clarksville  undisturbed.  It  is  unsafe  to 
rely  that  they  will  not  dare  to  expose  Nashville  to 
Buell.  A  small  part  of  their  force  can  retire  slowly 
toward  Nashville,  breaking  up  the  railroad  as  they  go, 
and  keep  Buell  out  of  that  city  twenty  days.  Mean 
time,  Nashville  will  be  abundantly  defended  by  forces 
from  all  south  and  perhaps  from  here  at  Manassas. 
Could  not  a  cavalry  force  from  General  Thomas  on  the 
upper  Cumberland  dash  across,  almost  unresisted,  and 
cut  the  railroad  at  or  near  Knoxville,  Tennessee?  In 
the  midst  of  a  bombardment  at  Fort  Donelson,  why 
could  not  a  gunboat  run  up  and  destroy  the  bridge  at 
Clarksville?  Our  success  or  failure  at  Fort  Donelson 


HALLECK'S  ACTIVITY  269 

is  vastly  important,  and  I  beg  you  to  put  your  soul  in 
the  effort.  I  send  a  copy  of  this  to  Buell." 

This  telegram  abundantly  shows  with  what  minute 
understanding  and  accurate  judgment  the  President 
comprehended  military  conditions  and  results  in  the 
West.  Buell,  however,  was  too  intent  upon  his  own 
separate  movement  to  seize  the  brilliant  opportunity 
offered  him.  As  he  only  in  a  feeble  advance  followed 
up  the  retreating  Confederate  column  from  Bowling 
Green  to  Nashville,  Halleck  naturally  appropriated  to 
himself  the  merit  of  the  campaign,  and  telegraphed  to 
Washington  on  the  day  after  the  surrender : 

"Make  Buell,  Grant,  and  Pope  major-generals  of 
volunteers,  and  give  me  command  in  the  West.  I  ask 
this  in  return  for  Forts  Henry  and  Donelson." 

The  eagerness  of  General  Halleck  for  superior  com 
mand  in  the  West  was,  to  say  the  least,  very  pardon 
able.  A  vast  horizon  of  possibilities  was  opening  up  to 
his  view.  Two  other  campaigns  under  his  direction 
were  exciting  his  liveliest  hopes.  Late  in  December 
he  had  collected  an  army  of  ten  thousand  at  the  rail 
road  terminus  at  Rolla,  Missouri,  under  command  of 
Brigadier-General  Curtis,  for  the  purpose  of  scatter 
ing  the  rebel  forces  under  General  Price  at  Spring 
field,  or  driving  them  out  of  the  State.  Despite  the 
hard  winter  weather,  Halleck  urged  on  the  move 
ment  with  almost  peremptory  orders,  and  Curtis  exe 
cuted  the  intentions  of  his  chief  with  such  alacrity  that 
Price  was  forced  into  a  rapid  and  damaging  retreat 
from  Springfield  toward  Arkansas.  While  forcing 
this  enterprise  in  the  southwest,  Halleck  had  also  deter 
mined  on  an  important  campaign  in  southeast  Mis 
souri. 

Next  to  Columbus,  which  the  enemy  evacuated  on 
March  2,  the  strongest  Confederate  fortifications  on 


270  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

the  Mississippi  River  were  at  Island  No.  10,  about 
forty  miles  farther  to  the  south.  To  operate  against 
these,  he  planned  an  expedition  under  Brigadier-Gen 
eral  Pope  to  capture  the  town  of  New  Madrid  as  a  pre 
liminary  step.  Columbus  and  Nashville  were  almost 
sure  to  fall  as  the  result  of  Donelson.  If  now  he  could 
bring  his  two  Missouri  campaigns  into  a  combination 
with  two  swift  and  strong  Tennessee  expeditions,  while 
the  enemy  was  in  scattered  retreat,  he  could  look  for 
ward  to  the  speedy  capture  of  Memphis.  But  to  the 
realization  of  such  a  project,  the  hesitation  and  slow 
ness  of  Buell  were  a  serious  hindrance.  That  general 
had  indeed  started  a  division  under  Nelson  to  Grant's 
assistance,  but  it  was  not  yet  in  the  Cumberland  when 
Donelson  surrendered.  Halleck's  demand  for  en 
larged  power,  therefore,  became  almost  imperative. 
He  pleaded  earnestly  with  Buell : 

"I  have  asked  the  President  to  make  you  a  major- 
general.  Come  down  to  the  Cumberland  and  take  com 
mand.  The  battle  of  the  West  is  to  be  fought  in  that 
vicinity.  .  .  .  There  will  be  no  battle  at  Nash 
ville.''  His  telegrams  to  McClellan  were  more  urgent. 
"Give  it  [the  Western  Division]  to  me,  and  I  will 
split  secession  in  twain  in  one  month."  And  again : 
"I  must  have  command  of  the  armies  in  the  West. 
Hesitation  and  delay  are  losing  us  the  golden  opportu 
nity.  Lay  this  before  the  President  and  Secretary  of 
War.  May  I  assume  the  command  ?  Answer  quickly." 

But  McClellan  was  in  no  mood  to  sacrifice  the  ambi 
tion  of  his  intimate  friend  and  favorite,  General  Buell, 
and  induced  the  President  to  withhold  his  consent ;  and 
while  the  generals  were  debating  by  telegraph,  Nelson's 
division  of  the  army  of  Buell  moved  up  the  Cumber 
land  and  occupied  .Nashville  under  the  orders  of  Grant. 
Halleck,  however,  held  tenaciously  to  his  views  and 


PEA  RIDGE  271 

requests,  explaining  to  McClellan  that  he  himself  pro 
posed  going  to  Tennessee : 

"That  is  now  the  great  strategic  line  of  the  west 
ern  campaign,  and  I  am  surprised  that  General  Buell 
should  hesitate  to  reinforce  me.  He  was  too  late  at 
Fort  Donelson.  .  .  .  Believe  me,  General,  you 
make  a  serious  mistake  in  having  three  independent 
commands  in  the  West.  There  never  will  and  never 
can  be  any  cooperation  at  the  critical  moment ;  all  mili 
tary  history  proves  it." 

This  insistence  had  greater  point  because  of  the  news 
received  that  Curtis,  energetically  following  Price  into 
Arkansas,  had  won  a  great  Union  victory  at  Pea 
Ridge,  between  March  5  and  8,  over  the  united  forces 
of  Price  and  McCulloch,  commanded  by  Van  Dorn. 
At  this  juncture,  events  at  Washington,  hereafter  to  be 
mentioned,  caused  a  reorganization  of  military  com 
mands,  and  President  Lincoln's  Special  War  Order 
No.  3  consolidated  the  western  departments  of  Hunter, 
Halleck,  and  Buell,  as  far  east  as  Knoxville,  Tennessee, 
under  the  title  of  the  Department  of  the  Mississippi, 
and  placed  General  Halleck  in  command  of  the  whole. 
Meanwhile,  Halleck  had  ordered  the  victorious  Union 
army  at  Fort  Donelson  to  move  forward  to  Savannah 
on  the  Tennessee  River  under  the  command  of  Grant ; 
and,  now  that  he  had  superior  command,  directed  Buell 
to  march  all  of  his  forces  not  required  to  defend  Nash 
ville  "as  rapidly  as  possible"  to  the  same  point.  Hal 
leck  was  still  at  St.  Louis;  and  through  the  indecision 
of  his  further  orders,  through  the  slowness  of  Buell's 
march,  and  through  the  unexplained  inattention  of 
Grant,  the  L^nion  armies  narrowly  escaped  a  serious 
disaster,  which,  however,  the  determined  courage  of 
the  troops  and  subordinate  officers  turned  into  a  most 
important  victory. 


272  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

The  "golden  opportunity"  so  earnestly  pointed  out 
by  Halleck,  while  not  entirely  lost,  was  nevertheless 
seriously  diminished  by  the  hesitation  and  delay  of 
the  Union  commanders  to  agree  upon  some  plan  of 
effective  cooperation.  When,  at  the  fall  of  Fort  Donel- 
son,  the  Confederates  retreated  from  Nashville  toward 
Chattanooga,  and  from  Columbus  toward  Jackson,  a 
swift  advance  by  the  Tennessee  River  could  have  kept 
them  separated;  but  as  that  open  highway  was  not 
promptly  followed  in  force,  the  flying  Confederate  de 
tachments  found  abundant  leisure  to  form  a  junction. 

Grant  reached  Savannah,  on  the  east  bank  of  the 
Tennessee  River,  about  the  middle  of  March,  and  in  a 
few  days  began  massing  troops  at  Pittsburg  Landing, 
six  miles  farther  south,  on  the  west  bank  of  the  Ten 
nessee;  still  keeping  his  headquarters  at  Savannah,  to 
await  the  arrival  of  Buell  and  his  army.  During  the 
next  two  weeks  he  reported  several  times  that  the  en 
emy  was  concentrating  at  Corinth,  Mississippi,  an  im 
portant  railroad  crossing  twenty  miles  from  Pittsburg 
Landing,  the  estimate  of  their  number  varying  from 
forty  to  eighty  thousand.  All  this  time  his  mind  was 
so  filled  with  an  eager  intention  to  begin  a  march  upon 
Corinth,  and  a  confidence  that  he  could  win  a  victory 
by  a  prompt  attack,  that  he  neglected  the  essential  pre 
caution  of  providing  against  an  attack  by  the  enemy, 
which  at  the  same  time  was  occupying  the  thoughts  of 
the  Confederate  commander  General  Johnston. 

General  Grant  was  therefore  greatly  surprised  on 
the  morning  of  April  6,  when  he  proceeded  from 
Savannah  to  Pittsburg  Landing,  to  learn  the  cause  of 
a  fierce  cannonade.  He  found  that  the  Confederate 
army,  forty  thousand  strong,  was  making  an  unex 
pected  and  determined  attack  in  force  on  the  Union 
camp,  whose  five  divisions  numbered  a  total  of  about 


PITTSBURG  LANDING  273 

thirty-three  thousand.  The  Union  generals  had  made 
no  provision  against  such  an  attack.  No  intrenchments 
had  been  thrown  up,  no  plan  or  understanding  ar 
ranged.  A  few  preliminary  picket  skirmishes  had, 
indeed,  put  the  Union  front  on  the  alert,  but  the  com 
manders  of  brigades  and  regiments  were  not  prepared 
for  the  impetuous  rush  with  which  the  three  successive 
Confederate  lines  began  the  main  battle.  On  their  part, 
the  enemy  did  not  realize  their  hope  of  effecting  a  com 
plete  surprise,  and  the  nature  of  the  ground  was  so 
characterized  by  a  network  of  local  roads,  alternating 
patches  of  woods  and  open  fields,  miry  hollows  and 
abrupt  ravines,  that  the  lines  of  conflict  were  quickly 
broken  into  short,  disjointed  movements  that  admitted 
of  little  or  no  combined  or  systematic  direction.  The 
effort  of  the  Union  officers  was  necessarily  limited  to  a 
continuous  resistance  to  the  advance  of  the  enemy, 
from  whatever  direction  it  came ;  that  of  the  Confeder 
ate  leaders  to  the  general  purpose  of  forcing  the  Union 
lines  away  from  Pittsburg  Landing  so  that  they  might 
destroy  the  Federal  transports  and  thus  cut  off  all 
means  of  retreat.  In  this  effort,  although  during  the 
whole  of  Sunday,  April  6,  the  Union  front  had  been 
forced  back  a  mile  and  a  half,  the  enemy  had  not  en 
tirely  succeeded.  About  sunset,  General  Beauregard, 
who,  by  the  death  of  General  Johnston  during  the 
afternoon,  succeeded  to  the  Confederate  command, 
gave  orders  to  suspend  the  attack,  in  the  firm  expecta 
tion,  however,  that  he  would  be  able  to  complete  his 
victory  the  next  morning. 

But  in  this  hope  he  was  disappointed.  During  the 
day  the  vanguard  of  Buell's  army  had  arrived  on  the 
opposite  bank  of  the  river.  Before  nightfall  one  of 
his  brigades  was  ferried  across  and  deployed  in  front 
of  the  exultant  enemy.  During  the  night  and  early 

18 


274  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Monday  morning  three  superb  divisions  of  Buell's 
army,  about  twenty  thousand  fresh,  well-drilled  troops, 
wereadvanced  to  the  front  under  Buell's  own  direction; 
and  by  three  o'clock  of  that  day  the  two  wings  of  the 
Union  army  were  once  more  in  possession  of  all  the 
ground  that  had  been  lost  on  the  previous  day,  while 
the  foiled  and  disorganized  Confederates  were  in  full 
retreat  upon  Corinth.  The  severity  of  the  battle  may 
be  judged  by  the  losses.  In  the  Union  army:  killed, 
1754;  wounded,  8408;  missing,  2885.  In  the  Confed 
erate  army  :  killed,  1728;  wounded,  8012;  missing,  954. 
Having  comprehended  the  uncertainty  of  Buell's 
successful  junction  with  Grant,  Halleck  must  have  re 
ceived  tidings  of  the  final  victory  at  Pittsburg  Landing 
with  emotions  of  deep  satisfaction.  To  this  was  now 
joined  the  further  gratifying  news  that  the  enemy  on 
that  same  momentous  April  7  had  surrendered  Island 
No.  10,  together  with  six  or  seven  thousand  Confeder 
ate  troops,  including  three  general  officers,  to  the  com 
bined  operations  of  General  Pope  and  Flag-Officer 
Foote.  Full  particulars  of  these  two  important  victo 
ries  did  not  reach  Halleck  for  several  days.  Following 
previous  suggestions,  Pope  and  Foote  promptly  moved 
their  gunboats  and  troops  down  the  river  to  the  next 
Confederate  stronghold,  Fort  Pillow,  where  extensive 
fortifications,  aided  by  an  overflow  of  the  adjacent 
river  banks,  indicated  strong  resistance  and  consider 
able  delay.  When  all  the  conditions  became  more 
fully  known,  Halleck  at  length  adopted  the  resolution, 
to  which  he  had  been  strongly  leaning  for  some  time, 
to  take  the  field  himself.  About  April  10  he  proceeded 
from  St.  Louis  to  Pittsburg  Landing,  and  on  the  fif 
teenth  ordered  Pope  with  his  army  to  join  him  there, 
which  the  latter,  having  his  troops  already  on  trans 
ports,  succeeded  in  accomplishing  by  April  22.  Hal- 


HALLECK'S  MISTAKES  275 

leek  immediately  effected  a  new  organization,  combin 
ing  the  armies  of  the  Tennessee,  of  the  Ohio,  and  of 
the  Mississippi  into  respectively  his  right  wing,  center, 
and  left  wing.  He  assumed  command  of  the  whole 
himself,  and  nominally  made  Grant  second  in  com 
mand.  Practically,  however,  he  left  Grant  so  little 
authority  or  work  that  the  latter  felt  himself  slighted, 
and  asked  leave  to  proceed  to  another  field  of  duty. 

It  required  but  a  few  weeks  to  demonstrate  that  how 
ever  high  were  Halleck's  professional  acquirements  in 
other  respects,  he  was  totally  unfit  for  a  commander 
in  the  field.  Grant  had  undoubtedly  been  careless  in 
not  providing  against  the  enemy's  attack  at  Pittsburg 
Landing.  Halleck,  on  the  other  extreme,  was  now 
doubly  overcautious  in  his  inarch  upon  Corinth.  From 
first  to  last,  his  campaign  resembled  a  siege.  With  over 
one  hundred  thousand  men.  under  his  hand,  he  moved 
at  a  snail's  pace,  building  roads  and  breastworks,  and 
consuming  more  than  a  month  in  advancing  a  distance 
of  twenty  miles;  during  which  period  Beauregard 
managed  to  collect  about  fifty  thousand  effective  Con 
federates  and  construct  defensive  fortifications  with 
equal  industry  around  Corinth.  When,  on  May  29, 
Halleck  was  within  assaulting  distance  of  the  rebel  in- 
trenchments,  Beauregard  had  leisurely  removed  his 
sick  and  wounded,  destroyed  or  carried  away  his  stores, 
and  that  night  finally  evacuated  the  place,  leaving  Hal 
leck  to  reap,  practically,  a  barren  victory. 

Nor  were  the  general's  plans  and  actions  any  more 
fruitful  during  the  following  six  weeks.  He  wasted 
the  time  and  energy  of  his  soldiers  multiplying  useless 
fortifications  about  Corinth.  He  despatched  Buell's 
wing  of  the  army  on  a  march  toward  eastern  Tennes 
see,  but  under  such  instructions  and  limitations  that 
long  before  reaching  its  objective  it  was  met  by  a  Con- 


276  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

federate  army  under  General  Bragg,  and  forced  into 
a  retrograde  movement  which  carried  it  back  to  Louis 
ville.  More  deplorable,  however,  than  either  of  these 
errors  of  judgment  was  Halleck's  neglect  to  seize  the 
opportune  moment  when,  by  a  vigorous  movement  in 
cooperation  with  the  brilliant  naval  victories  under 
Flag-Officer  Farragut,  commanding  a  formidable  fleet 
of  Union  war-ships,  he  might  have  completed  the  over 
shadowing  military  task  of  opening  the  Mississippi 
River. 


XX 


The  Blockade — Hatteras  Inlet — Roanoke  Island — Fort 
Pulaski — Merrimac  and  Monitor — The  Cumberland 
Sunk — The  Congress  Burned — Battle  of  the  Ironclads 
— Flag-Officer  Farragut — Forts  Jackson  and  St.  Philip 
— New  Orleans  Captured — Farragut  at  Vicksburg — 
Farragut's  Second  Expedition  to  Vicksburg — Return 
to  New  Orleans 

IN  addition  to  its  heavy  work  of  maintaining  the 
Atlantic  blockade,  the  navy  of  the  United  States 
contributed  signally  toward  the  suppression  of  the 
rebellion  by  three  brilliant  victories  which  it  gained 
during  the  first  half  of  the  year  1862.  After  careful 
preparation  during  several  months,  a  joint  expedition 
under  the  command  of  General  Ambrose  E.  Burnside 
and  Flag-Officer  Goldsborough,  consisting  of  more 
than  twelve  thousand  men  and  twenty  ships  of  war, 
accompanied  by  numerous  transports,  sailed  from  Fort 
Monroe  on  January  n,  with  the  object  of  occupying 
the  interior  waters  of  the  North  Carolina  coast.  Be 
fore  the  larger  vessels  could  effect  their  entrance 
through  Hatteras  Inlet,  captured  in  the  previous 
August,  a  furious  storm  set  in,  which  delayed  the  ex 
pedition  nearly  a  month.  By  February  7,  however, 
that  and  other  serious  difficulties  were  overcome,  and 
on  the  following  day  the  expedition  captured  Roanoke 
Island,  and  thus  completely  opened  the  whole  interior 
water-system  of  Albemarle  and  Pamlico  sounds  to  the 
easy  approach  of  the  Union  fleet  and  forces. 

277 


278  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

From  Roanoke  Island  as  a  base,  minor  expeditions 
within  a  short  period  effected  the  destruction  of  the  not 
very  formidable  fleet  which  the  enemy  had  been  able  to 
organize,  and  the  reduction  of  Fort  Macon  and  the 
rebel  defenses  of  Elizabeth  City,  New  Berne,  and  other 
smaller  places.  An  eventual  advance  upon  Goldsboro' 
formed  part  of  the  original  plan ;  but,  before  it  could  be 
executed,  circumstances  intervened  effectually  to  thwart 
that  object. 

While  the  gradual  occupation  of  the  North  Carolina 
coast  was  going  on,  two  other  expeditions  of  a  similar 
nature  were  making  steady  progress.  One  of  them, 
under  the  direction  of  General  Quincy  A.  Gillmore, 
carried  on  a  remarkable  siege  operation  against  Fort 
Pulaski,  standing  on  an  isolated  sea  marsh  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Savannah  River.  Here  not  only  the  difficulties 
of  approach,  but  the  apparently  insurmountable  obsta 
cle  of  making  the  soft,  unctuous  mud  sustain  heavy  bat 
teries,  was  overcome,  and  the  fort  compelled  to  sur 
render  on  April  u,  after  an  effective  bombardment. 
The  second  was  an  expedition  of  nineteen  ships,  which, 
within  a  few  days  during  the  month  of  March,  without 
serious  resistance,  occupied  the  whole  remaining  At 
lantic  coast  southward  as  far  as  St.  Augustine. 

When,  at  the  outbreak  of  the  rebellion,  the  navy-yard 
at  Norfolk,  Virginia,  had  to  be  abandoned  to  the  en 
emy,  the  destruction  at  that  time  attempted  by  Com 
modore  Paulding  remained  very  incomplete.  Among 
the  vessels  set  on  fire,  the  screw-frigate  Merrimae, 
which  had  been  scuttled,  was  burned  only  to  the  water's 
edge,  leaving  her  hull  and  machinery  entirely  unin 
jured.  In  due  time  she  was  raised  by  the  Confederates, 
covered  with  a  sloping  roof  of  railroad  iron,  provided 
with  a  huge  wedge-shaped  prow  of  cast  iron,  and  armed 
with  a  formidable  battery  of  ten  guns.  Secret  infor- 


MERRIMAC  AND  MONITOR  279 

mation  came  to  the  Navy  Department  of  the  progress 
of  this  work,  and  such  a  possibility  was  kept  in  mind 
by  the  board  of  officers  that  decided  upon  the  con 
struction  of  the  three  experimental  ironclads  in  Sep 
tember,  1 86 1. 

The  particular  one  of  these  three  especially  intended 
for  this  peculiar  emergency  was  a  ship  of  entirely  novel 
design,  made  by  the  celebrated  inventor  John  Ericsson, 
a  Swede  by  birth,  but  American  by  adoption — a  man 
who  combined  great  original  genius  with  long  scientific 
study  and  experience.  His  invention  may  be  most 
quickly  described  as  having  a  small,  very  low  hull,  cov 
ered  by  a  much  longer  and  wider  flat  deck  only  a  foot 
or  two  above  the  water-line,  upon  which  was  placed  a 
revolving  iron  turret  twenty  feet  in  diameter,  nine  feet 
high,  and  eight  inches  thick,  on  the  inside  of  which  were 
two  eleven-inch  guns  trained  side  by  side  and  revolv 
ing  with  the  turret.  This  unique  naval  structure  was 
promptly  nicknamed  "a  cheese-box  on  a  raft,"  and  the 
designation  was  not  at  all  inapt.  Naval  experts  at  once 
recognized  that  her  sea-going  qualities  were  bad;  but 
compensation  was  thought  to  exist  in  the  belief  that  her 
iron  turret  would  resist  shot  and  shell,  and  that  the  thin 
edge  of  her  flat  deck  would  offer  only  a  minimum  mark 
to  an  enemy's  guns :  in  other  words,  that  she  was  no 
cruiser,  but  would  prove  a  formidable  floating  battery ; 
and  this  belief  she  abundantly  justified. 

The  test  of  her  fighting  qualities  was  attended  by 
what  almost  suggested  a  miraculous  coincidence.  On 
Saturday,  March  8,  1862,  about  noon,  a  strange-look 
ing  craft  resembling  a  huge  turtle  was  seen  coming  into 
Hampton  Roads  out  of  the  mouth  of  Elizabeth  River, 
and  it  quickly  became  certain  that  this  was  the  much 
talked  of  rebel  ironclad  Merrimac,  or,  as  the  Confeder 
ates  had  renamed  her,  the  Virginia.  She  steamed 


28o  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

rapidly  toward  Newport  News,  three  miles  to  the  south 
west,  where  the  Union  ships  Congress  and  Cumber 
land  lay  at  anchor.  These  saw  the  uncouth  monster 
coming  and  prepared  for  action.  The  Minnesota,  the 
St.  Lawrence,  and  the  Roanoke,  lying  at  Fortress  Mon 
roe  also  saw  her  and  gave  chase,  but,  the  water  being 
low,  they  all  soon  grounded.  The  broadsides  of  the 
Congress,  as  the  Merrimac  passed  her  at  three  hundred 
yards'  distance,  seemed  to  produce  absolutely  no  effect 
upon  her  sloping  iron  roof.  Neither  did  the  broadsides 
of  her  intended  prey,  nor  the  fire  of  the  shore  batteries, 
for  even  an  instant  arrest  her  speed  as,  rushing  on,  she 
struck  the  Cumberland,  and  with  her  iron  prow  broke 
a  hole  as  large  as  a  hogshead  in  her  side.  Then  backing 
away  and  hovering  over  her  victim  at  convenient  dis 
tance,  she  raked  her  decks  with  shot  and  shell  until, 
after  three  quarters  of  an  hour's  combat,  the  Cumber- 
laud  and  her  heroic  defenders,  who  had  maintained  the 
fight  with  unyielding  stubbornness,  went  to  the  bottom 
in  fifty  feet  of  water  with  colors  flying. 

I  laving  sunk  the  Cumberland,  the  Merrimac  next 
turned  her  attention  to  the  Congress,  which  had  mean 
while  run  into  shoal  water  and  grounded  where  the 
rebel  vessel  could  not  follow.  But  the  Merrimac,  be 
ing  herself  apparently  proof  against  shot  and  shell  by 
her  iron  plating,  took  up  a  raking  position  two  cables' 
length  away,  and  during  an  hour's  firing  deliberately 
reduced  the  Congress  to  helplessness  and  to  surrender 
—her  commander  being  killed  and  the  vessel  set  on 
fire.  The  approach,  the  manoeuvering,  and  the  two 
successive  combats  consumed  the  afternoon,  and  tow 
ard  nightfall  the  Merrimac  and  her  three  small  con 
sorts  that  had  taken  little  part  in  the  action  withdrew 
to  the  rebel  batteries  on  the  Virginia  shore :  not  alone 
because  of  the  approaching  darkness  and  the  fatigue  of 


MERRIMAC  AND  MONITOR  281 

the  crew,  but  because  the  rebel  ship  had  really  suffered 
considerable  damage  in  ramming  the  Cumberland,  as 
well  as  from  one  or  two  chance  shots  that  entered  her 
port-holes. 

That  same  night,  while  the  burning  Congress  yet 
lighted  up  the  waters  of  Hampton  Roads,  a  little  ship, 
as  strange-looking  and  as  new  to  marine  warfare  as  the 
rebel  turtleback  herself,  arrived  by  sea  in  tow  from 
New  York,  and  receiving  orders  to  proceed  at  once 
to  the  scene  of  conflict,  stationed  herself  near  the 
grounded  Minnesota.  This  was  Ericsson's  "cheese- 
box  on  a  raft,"  named  by  him  the  Monitor.  The  Union 
officers  who  had  witnessed  the  day's  events  with  dis 
may,  and  were  filled  with  gloomy  forebodings  for  the 
morrow,  while  welcoming  this  providential  reinforce 
ment,  were  by  no  means  reassured.  The  Monitor  was 
only  half  the  size  of  her  antagonist,  and  had  only  two 
guns  to  the  other's  ten.  But  this  very  disparity  proved 
an  essential  advantage.  With  only  ten  feet  draft  to  the 
Merrimac's  twenty-two,  she  not  only  possessed  supe 
rior  mobility,  but  might  run  where  the  Merrimac  could 
not  follow.  When,  therefore,  at  eight  o'clock  on  Sun 
day,  March  9,  the  Merrimac  again  came  into  Hamp 
ton  Roads  to  complete  her  victory,  Lieutenant  John  L. 
Worden,  commanding  the  Monitor,  steamed  boldly 
out  to  meet  her. 

Then  ensued  a  three  hours'  naval  conflict  which  held 
the  breathless  attention  of  the  active  participants  and 
the  spectators  on  ship  and  shore,  and  for  many  weeks 
excited  the  wonderment  of  the  reading  world.  If  the 
Monitor's  solid  eleven-inch  balls  bounded  without  ap 
parent  effect  from  the  sloping  roof  of  the  Merrimac, 
so,  in  turn,  the  Merrimac's  broadsides  passed  harm 
lessly  over  the  low  deck  of  the  Monitor,  or  rebounded 
from  the  round  sides  of  her  iron  turret.  When  the 


282  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

unwieldy  rebel  turtleback,  with  her  slow,  awkward 
movement,  tried  to  ram  the  pointed  raft  that  carried 
the  cheese-box,  the  little  vessel,  obedient  to  her  rudder, 
easily  glided  out  of  the  line  of  direct  impact. 

Each  ship  passed  through  occasional  moments  of 
danger,  but  the  long  three  hours'  encounter  ended 
without  other  serious  damage  than  an  injury  to  Lieu 
tenant  Worden  by  the  explosion  of  a  rebel  shell  against 
a  crevice  of  the  Monitor's  pilot-house  through  which 
he  was  looking,  which,  temporarily  blinding  his  eye 
sight,  disabled  him  from  command.  At  that  point  the 
battle  ended  by  mutual  consent.  The  Monitor,  un 
harmed  except  by  a  few  unimportant  dents  in  her 
plating,  ran  into  shoal  water  to  permit  surgical  atten 
dance  to  her  wounded  officer.  On  her  part,  the  Mer 
rimac,  abandoning  any  further  molestation  of  the  other 
ships,  steamed  away  at  noon  to  her  retreat  in  Elizabeth 
River.  The  forty-one  rounds  fired  from  the  Monitor's 
guns  had  so  far  weakened  the  Merrimac' s  armor  that, 
added  to  the  injuries  of  the  previous  day,  it  was  of  the 
highest  prudence  to  avoid  further  conflict.  A  tragic 
fate  soon  ended  the  careers  of  both  vessels.  Owing  to 
other  military  events,  the  Merrimac  was  abandoned, 
burned,  and  blown  up  by  her  officers  about  two  months 
later;  and  in  the  following  December,  the  Monitor 
foundered  in  a  gale  off  Cape  Hatteras.  But  the  types 
of  these  pioneer  ironclads,  which  had  demonstrated 
such  unprecedented  fighting  qualities,  were  continued. 
Before  the  end  of  the  war  the  Union  navy  had  more 
than  twenty  monitors  in  service;  and  the  structure  of 
the  Merrimac  was  in  a  number  of  instances  repeated 
by  the  Confederates. 

The  most  brilliant  of  all  the  exploits  of  the  navy  dur 
ing  the  year  1862  were  those  carried  on  under  the 
command  of '  Flag-Officer  David  G.  Farragut,  who. 


FLAG-OFFICER   FARRAGUT  283 

though  a  born  Southerner  and  residing  in  Virginia 
when  the  rebellion  broke  out,  remained  loyal  to  the 
government  and  true  to  the  flag  he  had  served  for 
forty-eight  years.  Various  preparations  had  been 
made  and  various  plans  discussed  for  an  effective 
attempt  against  some  prominent  point  on  the  Gulf 
coast.  Very  naturally,  all  examinations  of  the  subject 
inevitably  pointed  to  the  opening  of  the  Mississippi  as 
the  dominant  problem  to  be  solved ;  and  on  January  9, 
Farragut  was  appointed  to  the  command  of  the  western 
Gulf  blockading  squadron,  and  eleven  days  thereafter 
received  his  confidential  instructions  to  attempt  the 
capture  of  the  city  of  New  Orleans. 

Thus  far  in  the  war,  Farragut  had  been  assigned 
to  no  prominent  service,  but  the  patience  with  which 
he  had  awaited  his  opportunity  was  now  more  than  com 
pensated  by  the  energy  and  thoroughness  with  which 
he  superintended  the  organization  of  his  fleet.  By  the 
middle  of  April  he  was  in  the  lower  Mississippi  with 
seventeen  men-of-war  and  one  hundred  and  seventy- 
seven  guns.  With  him  were  Commander  David  D. 
Porter,  in  charge  of  a  mortar  flotilla  of  nineteen 
schooners  and  six  armed  steamships,  and  General  Ben 
jamin  F.  Butler,  at  the  head  of  an  army  contingent  of 
six  thousand  men,  soon  to  be  followed  by  considerable 
reinforcements. 

The  first  obstacle  to  be  overcome  was  the  fire  from 
the  twin  forts  Jackson  and  St.  Philip,  situated  nearly 
opposite  each  other  at  a  bend  of  the  Mississippi  twenty- 
five  miles  above  the  mouth  of  the  river,  while  the  city 
of  New  Orleans  itself  lies  seventy-five  miles  farther 
up  the  stream.  These  were  formidable  forts  of  ma 
sonry,  with  an  armament  together  of  over  a  hundred 
guns,  and  garrisons  of  about  six  hundred  men  each. 
They  also  had  auxiliary  defenses :  first,  of  a  strong  river 


284  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

barrier  of  log  rafts  and  other  obstructions  connected  by 
powerful  chains,  half  a  mile  below  the  forts;  second, 
of  an  improvised  fleet  of  sixteen  rebel  gunboats  and  a 
formidable  floating  battery.  None  of  Farragut's  ships 
were  ironclad.  He  had,  from  the  beginning  of  the 
undertaking,  maintained  the  theory  that  a  wooden 
fleet,  properly  handled,  could  successfully  pass  the  bat 
teries  of  the  forts.  "I  would  as  soon  have  a  paper  ship 
as  an  ironclad ;  only  give  me  men  to  fight  her !"  he  said. 
He  might  not  come  back;  but  New  Orleans  would  be 
won.  In  his  hazardous  undertaking  his  faith  was  based 
largely  on  the  skill  and  courage  of  his  subordinate  com 
manders  of  ships,  and  this  faith  was  fully  sustained 
by  their  gallantry  and  devotion. 

Porter's  flotilla  of  nineteen  schooners  carrying  two 
mortars  each,  anchored  below  the  forts,  maintained  a 
heavy  bombardment  for  five  days,  and  then  Farragut 
decided  to  try  his  ships.  On  the  night  of  the  twentieth 
the  daring  work  of  two  gunboats  cut  an  opening 
through  the  river  barrier  through  which  the  vessels 
might  pass;  and  at  two  o'clock  on  the  morning  of 
April  24,  Farragut  gave  the  signal  to  advance.  The 
first  division  of  his  fleet,  eight  vessels,  led  by  Captain 
Bailey,  successfully  passed  the  barrier.  The  second 
division  of  nine  ships  was  not  quite  so  fortunate.  Three 
of  them  failed  to  pass  the  barrier,  but  the  others,  led  by 
Farragut  himself  in  his  flag-ship,  the  Hartford,  fol 
lowed  the  advance. 

The  starlit  night  was  quickly  obscured  by  the  smoke 
of  the  general  cannonade  from  both  ships  and  forts; 
but  the  heavy  batteries  of  the  latter  had  little  effect  on 
the  passing  fleet.  Farragut's  flag-ship  was  for  a  short 
while  in  great  danger.  At  a  moment  when  she  slightly 
grounded  a  huge  fire-raft,  fully  ablaze,  was  pushed 
against  her  by  a  rebel  tug,  and  the  flames  caught  in  the 


NEW  ORLEANS  CAPTURED     285 

paint  on  her  side,  and  mounted  into  her  rigging.  But 
this  danger  had  also  been  provided  against,  and  by 
heroic  efforts  the  Hartford  freed  herself  from  her  peril. 
Immediately  above  the  forts,  the  fleet  of  rebel  gunboats 
joined  in  the  battle,  which  now  resolved  itself  into  a 
series  of  conflicts  between  single  vessels  or  small 
groups.  But  the  stronger  and  better-armed  Union 
ships  quickly  destroyed  the  Confederate  flotilla,  with 
the  single  exception  that  two  of  the  enemy's  gunboats 
rammed  the  Varuna  from  opposite  sides  and  sank  her. 
Aside  from  this,  the  Union  fleet  sustained  much  mis 
cellaneous  damage,  but  no  serious  injury  in  the  furious 
battle  of  an  hour  and  a  half. 

With  but  a  short  halt  at  Quarantine,  six  miles  above 
the  forts,  Farragut  and  his  thirteen  ships  of  war 
pushed  on  rapidly  over  the  seventy-five  miles,  and  on 
the  forenoon  of  April  25  New  Orleans  lay  helpless 
under  the  guns  of  the  Union  fleet.  The  city  was 
promptly  evacuated  by  the  Confederate  General  Lovell. 
Meanwhile,  General  Butler  was  busy  moving  his  trans 
ports  and  troops  around  outside  by  sea  to  Quarantine ; 
and,  having  occupied  that  point  in  force,  Forts  Jackson 
and  St.  Philip  capitulated  on  April  28.  This  last  ob 
struction  removed,  Butler,  after  having  garrisoned  the 
forts,  brought  the  bulk  of  his  army  up  to  New  Orleans, 
and  on  May  i  Farragut  turned  over  to  him  the  formal 
possession  of  the  city,  where  Butler  continued  in  com 
mand  of  the  Department  of  the  Gulf  until  the  following 
December. 

Farragut  immediately  despatched  an  advance  section 
of  his  fleet  up  the  Mississippi.  None  of  the  important 
cities  on  its  banks  below  Vicksburg  had  yet  been  forti 
fied,  and,  without  serious  opposition,  they  surrendered 
as  the  Union  ships  successively  reached  them.  Farra 
gut  himself,  following  with  the  remainder  of  his  fleet, 


286  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

arrived  at  Vicksburg  on  May  20.  This  city,  by  reason 
of  the  high  bluffs  on  which  it  stands,  was  the  most 
defensible  point  on  the  whole  length  of  the  great  river 
within  the  Southern  States;  but  so  confidently  had  the 
Confederates  trusted  to  the  strength  of  their  works 
at  Columbus,  Island  No.  10,  Fort  Pillow,  and  other 
points,  that  the  fortifications  of  Vicksburg  had  thus 
far  received  comparatively  little  attention.  The  recent 
Union  victories,  however,  both  to  the  north  and  south, 
had  awakened  them  to  their  danger;  and  when  Lovell 
evacuated  New  Orleans,  he  shipped  heavy  guns  and 
sent  five  Confederate  regiments  to  Vicksburg ;  and  dur 
ing  the  eight  days  between  their  arrival  on  May  12  and 
the  twentieth,  on  which  day  Farragut  reached  the  city, 
six  rebel  batteries  were  put  in  readiness  to  fire  on  his 
ships. 

General  Halleck,  while  pushing  his  siege  works  tow 
ard  Corinth,  was  notified  as  early  as  April  27  that 
Farragut  was  coming,  and  the  logic  of  the  situation 
ought  to  have  induced  him  to  send  a  cooperating  force 
to  Farragut's  assistance,  or,  at  the  very  least,  to  have 
matured  plans  for  such  cooperation.  All  the  events 
would  have  favored  an  expedition  of  this  kind.  When 
Corinth,  at  the  end  of  May,  fell  into  Halleck's  hands, 
Forts  Pillow  and  Randolph  on  the  Mississippi  River 
were  hastily  evacuated  by  the  enemy,  and  on  June  6 
the  Union  flotilla  of  river  gunboats  which  had  ren 
dered  such  signal  service  at  Henry,  Donelson,  and 
Island  No.  10,  reinforced  by  a  hastily  constructed 
flotilla  of  heavy  river  tugs  converted  into  rams,  gained 
another  brilliant  victory  in  a  most  dramatic  naval  bat 
tle  at  Memphis,  during  which  an  opposing  Confederate 
flotilla  of  similar  rams  and  gunboats  was  almost  com 
pletely  destroyed,  and  the  immediate  evacuation  of 
Memphis  by  the  Confederates  thereby  forced. 


FARRAGUT  AT  VICKSBURG          287 

This  left  Vicksburg  as  the  single  barrier  to  the  com 
plete  opening  of  the  Mississippi,  and  that  barrier  was 
defended  by  only  six  batteries  and  a  garrison  of  six 
Confederate  regiments  at  the  date  of  Farragut's  arrival 
before  it.  But  Farragut  had  with  his  expedition  only 
two  regiments  of  troops,  and  the  rebel  batteries  were 
situated  at  such  an  elevation  that  the  guns  of  the  Union 
fleet  could  not  be  raised  sufficiently  to  silence  them. 
Neither  help  nor  promise  of  help  came  from  Halleck's 
army,  and  Farragut  could  therefore  do  nothing  but  turn 
his  vessels  down  stream  and  return  to  New  Orleans. 
There,  about  June  i,  he  received  news  from  the  Navy 
Department  that  the  administration  was  exceedingly 
anxious  to  have  the  Mississippi  opened ;  and  this  time, 
taking  with  him  Porter's  mortar  flotilla  and  three  thou 
sand  troops,  he  again  proceeded  up  the  river,  and  a 
second  time  reached  Vicksburg  on  June  25. 

The  delay,  however,  had  enabled  the  Confederates 
greatly  to  strengthen  the  fortifications  and  the  garrison 
of  the  city.  Neither  a  bombardment  from  Porter's 
mortar  sloops,  nor  the  running  of  Farragut's  ships  past 
the  batteries,  where  they  were  joined  by  the  Union  gun 
boat  flotilla  from  above,  sufficed  to  bring  the  Confeder 
ates  to  a  surrender.  Farragut  estimated  that  a  cooper 
ating  land  force  of  twelve  to  fifteen  thousand  would 
have  enabled  him  to  take  the  works;  and  Halleck,  on 
June  28  and  July  3,  partially  promised  early  assistance. 
But  on  July  14  he  reported  definitely  that  it  would  be 
impossible  for  him  to  render  the  expected  aid.  Under 
these  circumstances,  the  Navy  Department  ordered  Far 
ragut  back  to  New  Orleans,  lest  his  ships  of  deep  draft 
should  be  detained  in  the  river  by  the  rapidly  falling 
water.  The  capture  of  Vicksburg  was  postponed  for  a 
whole  year,  and  the  early  transfer  of  Halleck  to  Wash 
ington  changed  the  current  of  Western  campaigns. 


XXI 

McClellan's  Illness — Lincoln  Consults  McDowell  and 
Franklin — President's  Plan  against  Manassas — McClel 
lan' s  Plan  against  Richmond — Cameron  and  Stanton 
— President's  War  Order  No.  i — Lincoln's  Questions 
to  McClellan — News  from  the  West — Death  of  Willie 
Lincoln — The  Harper's  Ferry  Fiasco — President's  War 
Order  No.  j — The  Neivs  from  Hampton  Roads — Ma 
nassas  Evacuated — Movement  to  the  Peninsula — York- 
tozvn — The  Peninsula  Campaign — Seven  Days'  Battles 
— Retreat  to  Harrison's  Landing 

E  have  seen  how  the  express  orders  of  Presi- 
dent  Lincoln  in  the  early  days  of  January,  1862, 
stirred  the  Western  commanders  to  the  beginning  of 
active  movements  that  brought  about  an  important 
series  of  victories  during  the  first  half  of  the  year.  The 
results  of  his  determination  to  break  a  similar  military 
stagnation  in  the  East  need  now  to  be  related. 

The  gloomy  outlook  at  the  beginning  of  the  year 
has  already  been  mentioned.  Finding  on  January  10 
that  General  McClellan  was  still  ill  and  unable  to  see 
him,  he  called  Generals  McDowell  arid  Franklin  into 
conference  with  himself,  Seward,  Chase,  and  the  As 
sistant  Secretary  of  War;  and,  explaining  to  them  his 
dissatisfaction  and  distress  at  existing  conditions,  said 
to  them  that  "if  something  were  not  soon  done,  the 
bottom  would  be  out  of  the  whole  affair;  and  if  General 
McClellan  did  not  want  to  use  the  army,  he  would  like 

288 


CAMERON   AND    STANTON  289 

to  borrow  it,  provided  he  could  see  how  it  could  be 
made  to  do  something." 

The  two  generals,  differing  on  some  other  points, 
agreed,  however,  in  a  memorandum  prepared  next 
clay  at  the  President's  request,  that  a  direct  movement 
against  the  Confederate  army  at  Manassas  was  pref 
erable  to  a  movement  by  water  against  Richmond ;  that 
preparations  for  the  former  could  be  made  in  a  week, 
while  the  latter  would  require  a  month  or  six  weeks. 
Similar  discussions  were  held  on  the  eleventh  and 
twelfth,  and  finally,  on  January  13,  by  which  date  Gen 
eral  McClellan  had  sufficiently  recovered  to  be  present. 
McClellan  took  no  pains  to  hide  his  displeasure  at  the 
proceedings,  and  ventured  no  explanation  when  the 
President  asked  what  and  when  anything  could  be 
done.  Chase  repeated  the  direct  interrogatory  to  Mc 
Clellan  himself,  inquiring  what  he  intended  doing  with 
his  army,  and  when  he  intended  doing  it.  McClellan 
stated  his  unwillingness  to  develop  his  plans,  but  said 
he  would  tell  them  if  he  was  ordered  to  do  so.  The 
President  then  asked  him  if  he  had  in  his  own  mind 
any  particular  time  fixed  when  a  movement  could  be 
commenced.  McClellan  replied  that  he  had.  ''Then," 
rejoined  the  President,  "I  will  adjourn  this  meeting." 

While  these  conferences  were  going  on,  a  change 
occurred  in  the  President's  cabinet;  Secretary  of  War 
Cameron,  who  had  repeatedly  expressed  a  desire  to  be 
relieved  from  the  onerous  duties  of  the  War  Depart 
ment,  was  made  minister  to  Russia  and  Edwin  M. 
Stanton  appointed  to  succeed  him.  Stanton  had  been 
Attorney-General  during  the  last  months  of  President 
Buchanan's  administration,  and,  though  a  lifelong 
Democrat,  had  freely  conferred  and  cooperated  with 
Republican  leaders  in  the  Senate  and  House  of  Rep 
resentatives  in  thwarting  secession  schemes.  He  was 

19 


290  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

a  lawyer  of  ability  and  experience,  and,  possessing  or 
ganizing  qualities  of  a  high  degree  combined  with 
a  strong  will  and  great  physical  endurance,  gave  his 
administration  of  the  War  Department  a  record  for 
efficiency  which  it  will  be  difficult  for  any  future  min 
ister  to  equal ;  and  for  which  service  his  few  mistakes 
and  subordinate  faults  of  character  will  be  readily  for 
gotten.  In  his  new  functions,  Stanton  enthusias 
tically  seconded  the  President's  efforts  to  rouse  the 
Army  of  the  Potomac  to  speedy  and  vigorous  action. 

In  his  famous  report,  McClellan  states  that  very 
soon  after  Stanton  became  Secretary  of  War  he  ex 
plained  verbally  to  the  latter  his  plan  of  a  campaign 
against  Richmond  by  way  of  the  lower  Chesapeake 
Bay,  and  at  Stanton's  direction  also  explained  it  to 
the  President.  It  is  not  strange  that  neither  the  Presi 
dent  nor  the  new  Secretary  approved  it.  The  reasons 
which  then  existed  against  it  in  theory,  and  were  after 
ward  demonstrated  in  practice,  are  altogether  too  evi 
dent.  As  this  first  plan  was  never  reduced  to  writing, 
it  may  be  fairly  inferred  that  it  was  one  of  those  mere 
suggestions  which,  like  all  that  had  gone  before,  would 
serve  only  to  postpone  action. 

The  patience  of  the  President  was  at  length  so  far 
exhausted  that  on  January  27  he  wrote  his  General 
War  Order  No.  i,  which  directed  "that  the  22d  day  of 
February,  1862,  be  the  day  for  a  general  movement  of 
all  the  land  and  naval  forces  of  the  United  States 
against  the  insurgent  forces,"  and  that  the  Secretaries 
of  War  and  of  the  Navy,  the  general-in-chief,  and  all 
other  commanders  and  subordinates  of  land  and  naval 
forces  "will  severally  be  held  to  their  strict  and  full 
responsibilities  for  prompt  execution  of  this  order." 
To  leave  no  doubt  of  his  intention  that  the  Army  of 
the  Potomac  should  make  a  beginning,  the  President, 


LINCOLN'S   QUESTIONS  291 

four  days  later,  issued  his  Special  War  Order  No.  i, 
directing  that  after  providing  safely  for  the  defense  of 
Washington,  it  should  move  against  the  Confederate 
army  at  Manassas  Junction,  on  or  before  the  date 
announced. 

As  McClellan  had  been  allowed  to  have  his  way 
almost  without  question  for  six  months  past,  it  was, 
perhaps,  as  much  through  mere  habit  of  opposition 
as  from  any  intelligent  decision  in  his  own  mind 
that  he  again  requested  permission  to  present  his  ob 
jections  to  the  President's  plan.  Mr.  Lincoln,  there 
upon,  to  bring  the  discussion  to  a  practical  point,  wrote 
him  the  following  list  of  queries  on  February  3 : 

"My  DEAR  SIR  :  You  and  I  have  distinct  and  dif 
ferent  plans  for  a  movement  of  the  Army  of  the  Poto 
mac — yours  to  be  down  the  Chesapeake,  up  the  Rap- 
pahannock,  to  Urbana,  and  across  land  to  the  terminus 
of  the  railroad  on  the  York  River;  mine,  to  move 
directly  to  a  point  on  the  railroad  southwest  of  Ma 
nassas. 

"If  you  will  give  me  satisfactory  answers  to  the 
following  questions,  I  shall  gladly  yield  my  plan  to 
yours. 

"First.  Does  not  your  plan  involve  a  greatly  larger 
expenditure  of  time  and  money  than  mine? 

"Second.  Wherein  is  a  victory  more  certain  by  your 
plan  than  mine  ? 

"Third.  Wherein  is  a  victory  more  valuable  by  your 
plan  than  mine? 

"Fourth.  In  fact,  would  it  not  be  less  valuable  in 
this,  that  it  would  break  no  great  line  of  the  enemy's 
communications,  while  mine  would? 

"Fifth.  In  case  of  disaster,  would  not  a  retreat  be 
more  difficult  by  your  plan  than  mine?" 

Instead  of  specifically  answering  the  President's  con- 


292  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

cise  interrogatories,  McClellan,  on  the  following  day, 
presented  to  the  Secretary  of  War  a  long  letter,  recit 
ing  in  much  detail  his  statement  of  what  he  had  done 
since  coming  to  Washington,  and  giving  a  rambling 
outline  of  what  he  thought  might  be  accomplished  in 
the  future  prosecution  of  the  war.  His  reasoning 
in  favor  of  an  advance  by  Chesapeake  Bay  upon  Rich 
mond,  instead  of  against  Manassas  Junction,  rests 
principally  upon  the  assumption  that  at  Manassas  the 
enemy  is  prepared  to  resist,  while  at  Richmond  there 
are  no  preparations;  that  to  win  Manassas  would  give 
us  only  the  field  of  battle  and  the  moral  effect  of  a  vic 
tory,  while  to  win  Richmond  would  give  us  the  rebel 
capital  with  its  communications  and  supplies;  that  at 
Manassas  we  would  fight  on  a  field  chosen  by  the  en 
emy,  while  at  Richmond  we  would  fight  on  one  chosen 
by  ourselves.  If  as  a  preliminary  hypothesis  these  com 
parisons  looked  plausible,  succeeding  events  quickly 
exposed  their  fallacy. 

The  President,  in  his  anxious  studies  and  exhaustive 
discussion  with  military  experts  in  the  recent  confer 
ences,  fully  comprehended  that  under  McClellan's 
labored  strategical  theories  lay  a  fundamental  error. 
It  was  not  the  capture  of  a  place,  but  the  destruc 
tion  of  the  rebel  armies  that  was  needed  to  subdue  the 
rebellion.  But  Mr.  Lincoln  also  saw  the  fearful  re 
sponsibility  he  would  be  taking  upon  himself  if  he 
forced  McClellan  to  fight  against  his  own  judgment 
arid  protest,  even  though  that  judgment  was  incorrect. 
The  whole  subject,  therefore,  underwent  a  new  and 
yet  more  elaborate  investigation.  The  delay  which  this 
rendered  necessary  was  soon  greatly  lengthened  by  two 
other  causes.  It  was  about  this  time  that  the  tele 
graph  brought  news  from  the  West  of  the  surrender 
of  Fort  Henry,  February  6,  the  investment  of  Fort 


DEATH  OF  WILLIE  LINCOLN         293 

Donelson  on  the  thirteenth,  and  its  surrender  on  the 
sixteenth,  incidents  which  absorbed  the  constant  atten 
tion  of  the  President  and  the  Secretary  of  War.  Al 
most  simultaneously,  a  heavy  domestic  sorrow  fell  upon 
Mr.  Lincoln  in  the  serious  illness  of  his  son  Willie,  an 
interesting  and  most  promising  lad  of  twelve,  and  his 
death  in  the  White  House  on  February  20. 

When  February  22  came,  while  there  was  plainly  no 
full  compliance  with  the  President's  War  Order  No. 
i,  there  was,  nevertheless,  such  promise  of  a  beginning, 
even  at  Washington,  as  justified  reasonable  expecta 
tion.  The  authorities  looked  almost  hourly  for  the 
announcement  of  two  preliminary  movements  which 
had  been  preparing  for  many  days  :  one,  to  attack  rebel 
batteries  on  the  Virginia  shore  of  the  Potomac;  the 
other  to  throw  bridges — one  of  pontoons,  the  second  a 
permanent  bridge  of  canal-boats — across  the  river  at 
Harper's  Ferry,  and  an  advance  by  Banks's  division  on 
Winchester  to  protect  the  opening  of  the  Baltimore 
and  Ohio  railroad  and  reestablish  transportation  to  and 
from  the  West  over  that  important  route. 

On  the  evening  of  February  27,  Secretary  Stanton 
came  to  the  President,  and,  after  locking  the  door  to 
prevent  interruption,  opened  and  read  two  despatches 
from  McClellan,  who  had  gone  personally  to  superin 
tend  the  crossing.  The  first  despatch  from  the  general 
described  the  fine  spirits  of  the  troops,  and  the  splendid 
throwing  of  the  pontoon  bridge  by  Captain  Duane  and 
his  three  lieutenants,  for  whom  he  at  once  recom 
mended  brevets,  and  the  immediate  crossing  of  eighty- 
five  hundred  infantry.  This  despatch  was  dated  at 
ten  o'clock  the  previous  night.  'The  next  is  not  so 
good,"  remarked  the  Secretary  of  War.  It  stated 
that  the  lift  lock  was  too  small  to  permit  the  canal- 
boats  to  enter  the  river,  so  that  it  was  impossible  to 


294  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

construct  the  permanent  bridge.  He  would  therefore 
be  obliged  to  fall  back  upon  the  safe  and  slow  plan  of 
merely  covering  the  reconstruction  of  the  railroad, 
which  would  be  tedious  and  make  it  impossible  to  seize 
Winchester. 

"What  does  this  mean?"  asked  the  President,  in 
amazement. 

"It  means,"  said  the  Secretary  of  War,  "that  it  is 
a  damned  fizzle.  It  means  that  he  does  n't  intend  to 
do  anything." 

The  President's  indignation  was  intense;  and  when, 
a  little  later,  General  Marcy,  McClellan's  father-in- 
law  and  chief  of  staff,  came  in,  Lincoln's  criticism  of 
the  affair  was  in  sharper  language  than  was  his  usual 
habit. 

"Why,  in  the  name  of  common  sense,"  said  he,  ex 
citedly,  "could  n't  the  general  have  known  whether 
canal-boats  would  go  through  that  lock  before  he  spent 
a  million  dollars  getting  them  there  ?  I  am  almost  de 
spairing  at  these  results.  Everything  seems  to  fail. 
The  impression  is  daily  gaining  ground  that  the  gen 
eral  does  not  intend  to  do  anything.  By  a  failure  like 
this  we  lose  all  the  prestige  gained  by  the  capture  of 
Fort  Donelson." 

The  prediction  of  the  Secretary  of  War  proved  cor 
rect.  That  same  night,  McClellan  revoked  Hooker's 
authority  to  cross  the  lower  Potomac  and  demolish 
the  rebel  batteries  about  the  Occoquan  River.  It  was 
doubtless  this  Harper's  Ferry  incident  which  finally 
convinced  the  President  that  he  could  no  longer  leave 
McClellan  intrusted  with  the  sole  and  unrestricted 
exercise  of  military  affairs.  Yet  that  general  had 
shown  such  decided  ability  in  certain  lines  of  his  pro 
fession,  and  had  plainly  in  so  large  a  degree  won  the 
confidence  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  itself,  that  he 


PRESIDENT'S   WAR   ORDER   NO.   3     295 

did  not  wish  entirely  to  lose  the  benefit  of  his  services. 
He  still  hoped  that,  once  actively  started  in  the  field,  he 
might  yet  develop  valuable  qualities  of  leadership. 
He  had  substantially  decided  to  let  him  have  his  own 
way  in  his  proposed  campaign  against  Richmond  by 
water,  and  orders  to  assemble  the  necessary  vessels 
had  been  given  before  the  Harper's  Ferry  failure  was 
known. 

Early  on  the  morning  of  March  8,  the  President 
made  one  more  effort  to  convert  McClellan  to  a  direct 
movement  against  Manassas,  but  without  success.  On 
the  contrary,  the  general  convened  twelve  of  his  divi 
sion  commanders  in  a  council,  who  voted  eight  to  four 
for  the  water  route.  This  finally  decided  the  question 
in  the  President's  mind,  but  he  carefully  qualified  the 
decision  by  two  additional  war  orders  of  his  own, 
written  without  consultation.  President's  General 
War  Order  No.  2  directed  that  the  Army  of  the  Po 
tomac  should  be  immediately  organized  into  four  army 
corps,  to  be  respectively  commanded  by  McDowell, 
Sumner,  Heintzelman,  and  Keyes,  and  a  fifth  under 
Banks.  It  is  noteworthy  that  the  first  three  of  these 
had  always  earnestly  advocated  the  Manassas  move 
ment.  President's  General  War  Order  No.  3  directed, 
in  substance :  First.  An  immediate  effort  to  capture 
the  Potomac  batteries.  Second.  That  until  that  was 
accomplished  not  more  than  two  army  corps  should  be 
started  on  the  Chesapeake  campaign  toward  Rich 
mond.  Third.  That  any  Chesapeake  movement  should 
begin  in  ten  days;  and — Fourth.  That  no  such  move 
ment  should  be  ordered  without  leaving  Washington 
entirely  secure. 

Even  while  the  President  was  completing  the  draft 
ing  and  copying  of  these  important  orders,  events  were 
transpiring  which  once  more  put  a  new  face  upon  the 


296  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

proposed  campaign  against  Richmond.  During  the 
forenoon  of  the  next  day,  March  9,  a  despatch  was 
received  from  Fortress  Monroe,  reporting  the  appear 
ance  of  the  rebel  ironclad  Merrimac,  and  the  havoc  she 
had  wrought  the  previous  afternoon — the  Cumber 
land  sunk,  the  Congress  surrendered  and  burned,  the 
Minnesota  aground  and  about  to  be  attacked.  There 
was  a  quick  gathering  of  officials  at  the  Executive 
Mansion — Secretaries  Stanton,  Seward,  Welles,  Gen 
erals  McClellan,  Meigs,  Totten,  Commodore  Smith, 
and  Captain  Dahlgren — and  a  scene  of  excitement  en 
sued,  unequaled  by  any  other  in  the  President's  office 
during  the  war.  Stanton  walked  up  and  down  like  a 
caged  lion,  and  eager  discussion  animated  cabinet  and 
military  officers.  Two  other  despatches  soon  came, 
one  from  the  captain  of  a  vessel  at  Baltimore,  who  had 
left  Fortress  Monroe  on  the  evening  of  the  eighth,  and 
a  copy  of  a  telegram  to  the  "New  York  Tribune,"  giv 
ing  more  details. 

President  Lincoln  was  the  coolest  man  in  the  whole 
gathering,  carefully  analyzing  the  language  of  the 
telegrams,  to  give  their  somewhat  confused  statements 
intelligible  coherence.  Wild  suggestions  flew  from 
speaker  to  speaker  about  possible  danger  to  be  appre 
hended  from  the  new  marine  terror — whether  she 
might  not  be  able  to  go  to  New  York  or  Philadelphia 
and  levy  tribute,  to  Baltimore  or  Annapolis  to  de 
stroy  the  transports  gathered  for  McClellan's  move 
ment,  or  even  to  come  up  the  Potomac  and  burn  Wash 
ington;  and  all  sorts  of  prudential  measures  and 
safeguards  were  proposed. 

In  the  afternoon,  however,  apprehension  was  greatly 
quieted.  That  very  day  a  cable  was  laid  across  the 
bay,  giving  direct  telegraphic  communication  with 
Fortress  Monroe,  and  Captain  Fox,  who  happened  to 


NEWS   FROM   HAMPTON   ROADS      297 

be  on  the  spot,  concisely  reported  at  about  4  P.M.  the 
dramatic  sequel — the  timely  arrival  of  the  Monitor,  the 
interesting  naval  battle  between  the  two  ironclads,  and 
that  at  noon  the  Merrimac  had  withdrawn  from  the 
conflict,  and  with  her  three  small  consorts  steamed  back 
into  Elizabeth  River. 

Scarcely  had  the  excitement  over  the  Monitor  and 
Merrimac  news  begun  to  subside,  when,  on  the  same 
afternoon,  a  new  surprise  burst  upon  the  military  au 
thorities  in  a  report  that  the  whole  Confederate 
army  had  evacuated  its  stronghold  at  Manassas  and  the 
batteries  on  the  Potomac,  and  had  retired  southward 
to  a  new  line  behind  the  Rappahannock.  General  Mc- 
Clellan  hastened  across  the  river,  and,  finding  the  news 
to  be  correct,  issued  orders  during  the  night  for  a 
general  movement  of  the  army  next  morning  to  the 
vacated  rebel  camps.  The  march  was  promptly  accom 
plished,  notwithstanding  the  bad  roads,  and  the  troops 
had  the  meager  satisfaction  of  hoisting  the  Union  flag 
over  the  deserted  rebel  earthworks. 

For  two  weeks  the  enemy  had  been  preparing  for 
this  retreat;  and,  beginning  their  evacuation  on  the 
seventh,  their  whole  retrograde  movement  was  com 
pleted  by  March  n,  by  which  date  they  were  secure 
in  their  new  line  of  defense,  "prepared  for  such  an 
emergency — the  south  bank  of  the  Rappahannock 
strengthened  by  field-works,  and  provided  with  a  depot 
of  food,"  writes  General  Johnston.  No  further  com 
ment  is  needed  to  show  McClellan's  utter  incapacity  or 
neglect,  than  that  for  full  two  months  he  had  com 
manded  an  army  of  one  hundred  and  ninety  thousand, 
present  for  duty,  within  two  days'  march  of  the  forty- 
seven  thousand  Confederates,  present  for  duty,  whom 
he  thus  permitted  to  march  away  to  their  new  strong 
holds  without  a  gun  fired  or  even  a  meditated  attack. 


298  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

General  McClellan  had  not  only  lost  the  chance  of 
an  easy  and  brilliant  victory  near  Washington,  but 
also  the  possibility  of  his  favorite  plan  to  move  by  water 
to  Urbana  on  the  lower  Rappahannock,  and  from 
there  by  a  land  march  via  West  Point  toward  Rich 
mond.  On  that  route  the  enemy  was  now  in  his  way. 
He  therefore,  on  March  13,  hastily  called  a  council  of 
his  corps  commanders,  who  decided  that  under  the  new 
conditions  it  would  be  best  to  proceed  by  water  to 
Fortress  Monroe,  and  from  there  move  up  the  Penin 
sula  toward  Richmond.  To  this  new  plan,  adopted  in 
the  stress  of  excitement  and  haste,  the  President  an 
swered  through  the  Secretary  of  War  on  the  same  day : 

"First.  Leave  such  force  at  Manassas  Junction  as 
shall  make  it  entirely  certain  that  the  enemy  shall  not 
repossess  himself  of  that  position  and  line  of  com 
munication. 

"Second.  Leave  Washington  entirely  secure. 

"Third.  Move  the  remainder  of  the  force  down  the 
Potomac,  choosing  a  new  base  at  Fort  Monroe,  or  any 
where  between  here  and  there;  or,  at  all  events,  move 
such  remainder  of  the  army  at  once  in  pursuit  of  the 
enemy  by  some  route." 

Two  days  before,  the  President  had  also  announced 
a  step  which  he  had  doubtless  had  in  contemplation  for 
many  days,  if  not  many  weeks,  namely,  that — 

"Major-General  McClellan  having  personally  taken 
the  field  at  the  head  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac,  until 
otherwise  ordered,  he  is  relieved  from  the  command 
of  the  other  military  departments,  he  retaining  com 
mand  of  the  Department  of  the  Potomac." 

This  order  of  March  n  included  also  the  already 
mentioned  consolidation  of  the  western  departments 
under  Halleck;  and  out  of  the  region  lying  between 
Halleck's  command  and  McClellan's  command  it  ere- 


LINCOLN   TO   McCLELLAN  299 

ated  the  Mountain  Department,  the  command  of  which 
he  gave  to  General  Fremont,  whose  reinstatement  had 
been  loudly  clamored  for  by  many  prominent  and  en 
thusiastic  followers. 

As  the  preparations  for  a  movement  by  water  had 
been  in  progress  since  February  27,  there  was  little 
delay  in  starting  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  on  its  new 
campaign.  The  troops  began  their  embarkation  on 
March  17,  and  by  April  5  over  one  hundred  thousand 
men,  with  all  their  material  of  war,  had  been  trans 
ported  to  Fortress  Monroe,  where  General  McClellan 
himself  arrived  on  the  second  of  the  month,  and  issued 
orders  to  begin  his  march  on  the  fourth. 

Unfortunately,  right  at  the  outset  of  this  new  cam 
paign,  General  McClellan's  incapacity  and  want  of 
candor  once  more  became  sharply  evident.  In  the  plan 
formulated  by  the  four  corps  commanders,  and  ap 
proved  by  himself,  as  well  as  emphatically  repeated  by 
the  President's  instructions,  was  the  essential  require 
ment  that  Washington  should  be  left  entirely  secure. 
Learning  that  the  general  had  neglected  this  positive 
injunction,  the  President  ordered  McDowell's  corps 
to  remain  for  the  protection  of  the  capital;  and  when 
the  general  complained  of  this,  Mr.  Lincoln  wrote  him 
on  April  9 : 

"After  you  left  I  ascertained  that  less  than  twenty 
thousand  unorganized  men,  without  a  single  field-bat 
tery,  were  all  you  designed  to  be  left  for  the  defense  of 
Washington  and  Manassas  Junction;  and  part  of  this, 
even,  was  to  go  to  General  Hooker's  old  position. 
General  Banks's  corps,  once  designed  for  Manassas 
Junction,  was  divided  and  tied  up  on  the  line  of  Win 
chester  and  Strasburg,  and  could  not  leave  it  without 
again  exposing  the  upper  Potomac  and  the  Baltimore 
and  Ohio  railroad.  This  presented  (or  would  present 


300  ABRAHAM   LINCOLN 

when  McDowell  and  Sumner  should  be  gone)  a  great 
temptation  to  the  enemy  to  turn  back  from  the  Rap- 
pahannock  and  sack  Washington.  My  explicit  order 
that  Washington  should,  by  the  judgment  of  all  the 
commanders  of  corps,  be  left  entirely  secure,  had  been 
neglected.  It  was  precisely  this  that  drove  me  to  de 
tain  McDowell. 

"I  do  not  forget  that  I  was  satisfied  with  your  ar 
rangement  to  leave  Banks  at  Manassas  Junction ;  but 
when  that  arrangement  wras  broken  up  and  nothing 
was  substituted  for  it,  of  course  I  was  not  satisfied.  I 
was  constrained  to  substitute  something  for  it  myself. 

"And  now  allow  me  to  ask,  do  you  really  think  I 
should  permit  the  line  from  Richmond  via  Manassas 
Junction  to  this  city  to  be  entirely  open,  except  what 
resistance  could  be  presented  by  less  than  twenty  thou 
sand  unorganized  troops?  This  is  a  question  which 
the  country  will  not  allow  me  to  evade. 

"By  delay,  the  enemy  will  relatively  gain  upon  you — 
that  is,  he  will  gain  faster  by  fortifications  and  rein 
forcements  than  you  can  by  reinforcements  alone.  And 
once  more  let  me  tell  you  it  is  indispensable  to  you  that 
you  strike  a  blow.  I  am  powerless  to  help  this.  You 
will  do  me  the  justice  to  remember  I  always  insisted 
that  going  down  the  bay  in  search  of  a  field,  instead 
of  fighting  at  or  near  Manassas,  was  only  shifting  and 
not  surmounting  a  difficulty;  that  we  would  find  the 
same  enemy  and  the  same  or  equal  intrenchments  at 
either  place.  The  country  will  not  fail  to  note — is 
noting  now — that  the  present  hesitation  to  move  upon 
an  intrenched  enemy  is  but  the  story  of  Manassas  re 
peated." 

General  McClellan's  expectations  in  coming  to  the 
Peninsula,  first,  that  he  would  find  few  or  no  rebel 
intrenchments,  and,  second,  that  he  would  be  able  to 


YORKTOWN  301 

make  rapid  movements,  at  once  signally  failed.  On 
the  afternoon  of  the  second  day's  march  he  came  to  the 
first  line  of  the  enemy's  defenses,  heavy  fortifications 
at  Yorktown  on  the  York  River,  and  a  strong  line  of 
intrenchments  and  dams  flooding  the  Warwick  River, 
extending  to  an  impassable  inlet  from  James  River. 
But  the  situation  was  not  yet  desperate.  Magruder, 
the  Confederate  commander,  had  only  eleven  thou 
sand  men  to  defend  Yorktown  and  the  thirteen-mile 
line  of  the  Warwick.  McClellan,  on  the  contrary, 
had  fifty  thousand  at  hand,  and  as  many  more  within 
call,  with  which  to  break  the  Confederate  line  and  con 
tinue  his  proposed  "rapid  movements."  But  now, 
without  any  adequate  reconnaissance  or  other  vigor 
ous  effort,  he  at  once  gave  up  his  thoughts  of  rapid 
movement,  one  of  the  main  advantages  he  had  always 
claimed  for  the  water  route,  and  adopted  the  slow 
expedient  of  a  siege  of  Yorktown.  Not  alone  was  his 
original  plan  of  campaign  demonstrated  to  be  faulty, 
but  by  this  change  in  the  method  of  its  execution  it 
became  fatal. 

It  would  be  weary  and  exasperating  to  recount  in 
detail  the  remaining  principal  episodes  of  McClellan's 
operations  to  gain  possession  of  the  Confederate  cap 
ital.  The  whole  campaign  is  a  record  of  hesitation, 
delay,  and  mistakes  in  the  chief  command,  brilliantly 
relieved  by  the  heroic  fighting  and  endurance  of  the 
troops  and  subordinate  officers,  gathering  honor  out 
of  defeat,  and  shedding  the  luster  of  renown  over  a 
result  of  barren  failure.  McClellan  wasted  a  month 
raising  siege- works  to  bombard  Yorktown,  when  he 
might  have  turned  the  place  by  two  or  three  days'  oper 
ations  with  his  superior  numbers  of  four  to  one.  By 
his  failure  to  give  instructions  after  Yorktown  was 
evacuated,  he  allowed  a  single  division  of  his  advance- 


302  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

guard  to  be  beaten  back  at  Williamsburg,  when  thirty 
thousand  of  their  comrades  were  within  reach,  but 
without  orders.  He  wrote  to  the  President  that  he 
would  have  to  fight  double  numbers  intrenched,  when 
his  own  army  was  actually  twice  as  strong  as  that  of 
his  antagonist.  Placing  his  army  astride  the  Chicka- 
hominy,  he  afforded  that  antagonist,  General  John 
ston,  the  opportunity,  at  a  sudden  rise  of  the  river,  to 
fall  on  one  portion  of  his  divided  forces  at  Fair  Oaks 
with  overwhelming  numbers.  Finally,  when  he  was 
within  four  miles  of  Richmond  and  was  attacked  by 
General  Lee,  he  began  a  retreat  to  the  James  River, 
and  after  his  corps  commanders  held  the  attacking  en 
emy  at  bay  by  a  successful  battle  on  each  of  six  suc 
cessive  days,  he  day  after  day  gave  up  each  field  won 
or  held  by  the  valor  and  blood  of  his  heroic  soldiers. 
On  July  r,  the  collected  Union  army  made  a  stand  at 
the  battle  of  Malvern  Hill,  inflicting  a  defeat  on  the 
enemy  which  practically  shattered  the  Confederate 
army,  and  in  the  course  of  a  week  caused  it  to  retire 
within  the  fortifications  of  Richmond.  During  all  this 
magnificent  fighting,  however,  McClellan  was  op 
pressed  by  the  apprehension  of  impending  defeat;  and 
even  after  the  brilliant  victory  of  Malvern  Hill,  con 
tinued  his  retreat  to  Harrison's  Landing,  where  the 
Union  gunboats  on  the  James  River  assured  him  of 
safety  and  supplies. 

It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  this  Peninsula  cam 
paign,  from  the  landing  at  Fortress  Monroe  to  the  bat 
tle  at  Malvern  Hill,  occupied  three  full  months,  and 
that  during  the  first  half  of  that  period  the  government, 
yielding  to  McClellan's  constant  faultfinding  and 
clamor  for  reinforcements,  sent  him  forty  thousand 
additional  men;  also  that  in  the  opinion  of  competent 
critics,  both  Union  and  Confederate,  he  had,  after  the 


McCLELLAN   TO   STANTON  303 

battle  of  Fair  Oaks,  and  twice  during  the  seven  days' 
battles,  a  brilliant  opportunity  to  take  advantage  of 
Confederate  mistakes,  and  by  a  vigorous  offensive  to 
capture  Richmond.  But  constitutional  indecision  un 
fitted  him  to  seize  the  fleeting  chances  of  war.  His 
hope  of  victory  was  always  overawed  by  his  fear  of 
defeat.  While  he  commanded  during  a  large  part  of 
the  campaign  double,  and  always  superior,  numbers 
to  the  enemy,  his  imagination  led  him  continually  to 
double  their  strength  in  his  reports.  This  delusion 
so  wrought  upon  him  that  on  the  night  of  June  27  he 
sent  the  Secretary  of  War  an  almost  despairing  and 
insubordinate  despatch,  containing  these  inexcusable 
phrases : 

"Had  I  twenty  thousand  or  even  ten  thousand  fresh 
troops  to  use  to-morrow,  I  could  take  Richmond;  but 
I  have  not  a  man  in  reserve,  and  shall  be  glad  to  cover 
my  retreat  and  save  the  material  and  personnel  of  the 
army.  .  .  .  If  I  save  this  army  now,  I  tell  you 
plainly  that  I  owe  no  thanks  to  you  or  to  any  other 
persons  in  Washington.  You  have  done  your  best  to 
sacrifice  this  army." 

Under  almost  any  other  ruler  such  language  would 
have  been  quickly  followed  by  trial  and  dismissal,  if 
not  by  much  severer  punishment.  But  while  Mr.  Lin 
coln  was  shocked  by  McClellan's  disrespect,  he  was  yet 
more  startled  by  the  implied  portent  of  the  despatch. 
It  indicated  a  loss  of  confidence  and  a  perturbation  of 
mind  which  rendered  possible  even  a  surrender  of 
the  whole  army.  The  President,  therefore,  with  his 
habitual  freedom  from  passion,  merely  sent  an  un 
moved  and  kind  reply : 

"Save  your  army  at  all  events.  Will  send  rein 
forcements  as  fast  as  we  can.  Of  course  they  cannot 
reach  you  to-day,  to-morrow7,  or  next  day.  I  have  not 


304  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

said  you  were  ungenerous  for  saying  you  needed  rein-r 
forcements.  I  thought  you  were  ungenerous  in  as 
suming  that  I  did  not  send  them  as  fast  as  I  could.  I 
feel  any  misfortune  to  you  and  your  army  quite  as 
keenly  as  you  feel  it  yourself.  If  you  have  had  a  drawn 
battle  or  a  repulse,  it  is  the  price  we  pay  for  the  enemy 
not  being  in  Washington." 


XXII 

Jackson's  V alley  Campaign — Lincoln's  Visit  to  Scott — 
Pope  Assigned  to  Command — Lee's  Attack  on  McClel 
lan — Retreat  to  Harrison's  Landing — Scward  Sent  to 
Neiv  York — Lincoln's  Letter  to  Seward — Lincoln's 
Letter  to  McClellan — Lincoln's  Visit  to  McClellan — 
Hal  leek  made  General-in-Chief — Hal  leek's  Visit  to  Mc 
Clellan — Withdrawal  from  Harrison's  Landing — Pope 
Assumes  Command — Second  Battle  of  Bull  Run — The 
Cabinet  Protest — McClellan  Ordered  to  Defend  Wash 
ington — The  Maryland  Campaign — Battle  of  Antietam 
— Lincoln  Visits  Antietam — Lincoln's  Letter  to  Mc 
Clellan — McClellan  Removed  from  Command 

DURING  the  month  of  May,  while  General  Mc 
Clellan  was  slowly  working  his  way  across  the 
Chickahominy  by  bridge-building  and  intrenching, 
there  occurred  the  episode  of  Stonewall  Jackson's  val 
ley  campaign,  in  which  that  eccentric  and  daring  Con 
federate  commander  made  a  rapid  and  victorious 
march  up  the  Shenandoah  valley  nearly  to  Harper's 
Ferry.  Its  principal  effect  upon  the  Richmond  cam 
paign  was  to  turn  back  McDowell,  who  had  been 
started  on  a  land  march  to  unite  with  the  right  wing 
of  McClellan's  army,  under  instructions,  however,  al 
ways  to  be  in  readiness  to  interpose  his  force  against 
any  attempt  of  the  enemy  to  march  upon  Washington. 
This  campaign  of  Stonewall  Jackson's  has  been  much 
lauded  by  military  writers;  but  its  temporary  success 
resulted  from  good  luck  rather  than  military  ability. 

20  305 


306  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Rationally  considered,  it  was  an  imprudent  and  even 
reckless  adventure  that  courted  and  would  have  re 
sulted  in  destruction  or  capture  had  the  junction  of 
forces  under  McDowell,  Shields,  and  Fremont,  or 
dered  by  President  Lincoln,  not  been  thwarted  by  the 
mistake  and  delay  of  Fremont.  It  was  an  episode 
that  signally  demonstrated  the  wisdom  of  the  President 
in  having  retained  McDowell's  corps  for  the  protection 
of  the  national  capital. 

That,  however,  was  not  the  only  precaution  to  which 
the  President  had  devoted  his  serious  attention.  Dur 
ing  the  whole  of  McClellan's  Richmond  campaign  he 
had  continually  borne  in  mind  the  possibility  of  his  de 
feat,  and  the  eventualities  it  might  create.  Little  by 
little,  that  general's  hesitation,  constant  complaints,  and 
exaggerated  reports  of  the  enemy's  strength  changed 
the  President's  apprehensions  from  possibility  to  prob 
ability;  and  he  took  prompt  measures  to  be  prepared 
as  far  as  possible,  should  a  new  disaster  arise.  On 
June  24  he  made  a  hurried  visit  to  the  veteran  General 
Scott  at  West  Point,  for  consultation  on  the  existing 
military  conditions,  and  on  his  return  to  Washington 
called  General  Pope  from  the  West,  and,  by  an  order 
dated  June  26,  specially  assigned  him  to  the  command 
of  the  combined  forces  under  Fremont,  Banks,  and 
McDowell,  to  be  called  the  Army  of  Virginia,  whose 
duty  it  should  be  to  guard  the  Shenandoah  valley  and 
Washington  city,  and,  as  far  as  might  be,  render  aid  to 
McClellan's  campaign  against  Richmond. 

The  very  day  on  which  the  President  made  this  order 
proved  to  be  the  crisis  of  McClellan's  campaign.  That 
was  the  day  he  had  fixed  upon  for  a  general  advance; 
but  so  far  from  realizing  this  hope,  it  turned  out,  also, 
to  be  the  day  on  which  General  Lee  began  his  attack 
on  the  Army  of  the  Potomac,  which  formed  the  begin- 


LINCOLN  TO  SEWARD  307 

ning  of  the  seven  days'  battles,  and  changed  Mc- 
Clellan's  intended  advance  against  Richmond  to  a  re 
treat  to  the  James  River.  It  was  after  midnight  of  the 
next  day  that  McClellan  sent  Stanton  his  despairing 
and  insubordinate  despatch  indicating  the  possibility 
of  losing  his  entire  army. 

Upon  the  receipt  of  this  alarming  piece  of  news, 
President  Lincoln  instantly  took  additional  measures 
of  safety.  He  sent  a  telegram  to  General  Burnside  in 
North  Carolina  to  come  with  all  the  reinforcements 
he  could  spare  to  McClellan's  help.  Through  the  Sec 
retary  of  War  he  instructed  General  Halleck  at  Cor 
inth  to  send  twenty-five  thousand  infantry  to  McClellan 
by  way  of  Baltimore  and  Washington.  His  most  im 
portant  action  was  to  begin  the  formation  of  a  new 
army.  On  the  same  day  he  sent  Secretary  of  State 
Seward  to  New  York  with  a  letter  to  be  confidentially 
shown  to  such  of  the  governors  of  States  as  could  be 
hurriedly  called  together,  setting  forth  his  view  of  the 
present  condition  of  the  war,  and  his  own  determi 
nation  in  regard  to  its  prosecution.  After  outlining 
the  reverse  at  Richmond  and  the  new  problems  it  cre 
ated,  the  letter  continued : 

"What  should  be  done  is  to  hold  what  we  have  in 
the  West,  open  the  Mississippi,  and  take  Chattanooga 
and  East  Tennessee  without  more.  A  reasonable  force 
should  in  every  event  be  kept  about  Washington  for 
its  protection.  Then  let  the  country  give  us  a  hundred 
thousand  new  troops  in  the  shortest  possible  time, 
\vhich,  added  to  McClellan  directly  or  indirectly,  will 
take  Richmond  without  endangering  any  other  place 
which  we  now  hold,  and  will  substantially  end  the 
war.  I  expect  to  maintain  this  contest  until  successful, 
or  till  I  die,  or  am  conquered,  or  my  term  expires,  or 
Congress  or  the  country  forsake  me ;  and  I  would  pub- 


308  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

licly  appeal  to  the  country  for  this  new  force  were  it 
not  that  I  fear  a  general  panic  and  stampede  would 
follow,  so  hard  it  is  to  have  a  thing  understood  as  it 
really  is." 

Meanwhile,  by  the  news  of  the  victory  of  Malvern 
Hill  and  the  secure'  position  to  which  McClellan  had 
retired  at  Harrison's  Landing,  the  President  learned 
that  the  condition  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  was 
not  as  desperate  as  at  first  had  seemed.  The  result  of 
Seward's  visit  to  New  York  is  shown  in  the  President's 
letter  of  July  2,  answering  McClellan's  urgent  call  for 
heavy  reinforcements : 

"The  idea  of  sending  you  fifty  thousand,  or  any 
other  considerable  force,  promptly,  is  simply  absurd. 
If,  in  your  frequent  mention  of  responsibility,  you  have 
the  impression  that  I  blame  you  for  not  doing  more 
than  you  can,  please  be  relieved  of  such  impression. 
I  only  beg  that  in  like  manner  you  will  not  ask  impos 
sibilities  of  me.  If  you  think  you  are  not  strong 
enough  to  take  Richmond  just  now,  I  do  not  ask  you  to 
try  just  now.  Save  the  army,  material  and  personnel, 
and  I  will  strengthen  it  for  the  offensive  again  as  fast 
as  I  can.  The  governors  of  eighteen  States  offer  me  a 
new  levy  of  three  hundred  thousand,  which  I  accept." 

And  in  another  letter,  two  days  later : 

"To  reinforce  you  so  as  to  enable  you  to  resume  the 
offensive  within  a  month,  or  even  six  weeks,  is  impos 
sible.  .  .  .  Under  these  circumstances,  the  defen 
sive  for  the  present  must  be  your  only  care.  Save  the 
army — first,  where  you  are,  if  you  can;  secondly,  by 
removal,  if  you  must." 

To  satisfy  himself  more  fully  about  the  actual  situ 
ation,  the  President  made  a  visit  to  Harrison's  Landing 
on  July  8  and  9,  and  held  personal  interviews  with 
McClellan  and  his  leading  generals.  While  the  ques- 


HALLECK   GENERAL-IN-CHIEF        309 

tion  of  removing  the  army  underwent  considerable  dis 
cussion,  the  President  left  it  undecided  for  the  present ; 
but  on  July  n,  soon  after  his  return  to  Washington, 
he  issued  an  order  : 

"That  Major-General  Henry  W.  Halleck  be  assigned 
to  command  the  whole  land  forces  of  the  United  States, 
as  general-in-chief,  and  that  he  repair  to  this  capital 
so  soon  as  he  can  with  safety  to  the  positions  and  oper 
ations  within  the  department  now  under  his  charge." 

Though  General  Halleck  was  loath  to  leave  his  com 
mand  in  the  West,  he  made  the  necessary  dispositions 
there,  and  in  obedience  to  the  President's  order  reached 
Washington  on  July  23,  and  assumed  command  of  all 
the  armies  as  general-in-chief.  On  the  day  following 
he  proceeded  to  General  McClellan's  headquarters  at 
Harrison's  Landing,  and  after  two  days'  consultation 
reached  the  same  conclusion  at  which  the  President 
had  already  arrived,  that  the  Army  of  the  Potomac 
must  be  withdrawn.  McClellan  strongly  objected  to 
this  course.  He  wished  to  be  reinforced  so  that  he 
might  resume  his  operations  against  Richmond.  To 
do  this  he  wanted  fifty  thousand  more  men,  which 
number  it  was  impossible  to  give  him,  as  he  had  al 
ready  been  pointedly  informed  by  the  President.  On 
Halleck's  return  to  Washington,  it  was,  on  further  con 
sultation,  resolved  to  bring  the  Army  of  the  Potomac 
back  to  Acquia  Creek  and  unite  it  with  the  army  of 
Pope. 

On  July  30,  McClellan  received  a  preliminary  order 
to  send  away  his  sick,  and  the  withdrawal  of  his  entire 
force  was  ordered  by  telegraph  on  August  3.  With  the 
obstinacy  and  persistence  that  characterized  his  course 
from  first  to  last,  McClellan  still  protested  against  the 
change,  and  when  Halleck  in  a  calm  letter  answered 
his  objections  with  both  the  advantages  and  the  neces- 


3io  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

sity  of  the  order,  McClellan's  movement  of  withdrawal 
was  so  delayed  that  fully  eleven  days  of  inestimable 
time  were  unnecessarily  lost,  and  the  army  of  Pope 
was  thereby  put  in  serious  peril. 

Meanwhile,  under  President  Lincoln's  order  of 
June  26,  General  Pope  had  left  the  West,  and  about  the 
first  of  July  reached  Washington,  where  for  two  weeks, 
in  consultation  with  the  President  and  the  Secretary 
of  War,  he  studied  the  military  situation,  and  on  July 
14  assumed  command  of  the  Army  of  Virginia,  con 
sisting  of  the  corps  of  General  Fremont,  eleven  thou 
sand  five  hundred  strong,  and  that  of  General  Banks, 
eight  thousand  strong,  in  the  Shenandoah  valley,  and 
the  corps  of  General  McDowell,  eighteen  thousand  five 
hundred  strong,  with  one  division  at  Manassas  and 
the  other  at  Fredericksburg.  It  is  unnecessary  to  relate 
in  detail  the  campaign  which  followed.  Pope  intelli 
gently  and  faithfully  performed  the  task  imposed  on 
him  to  concentrate  his  forces  and  hold  in  check  the 
advance  of  the  enemy,  which  began  as  soon  as  the  Con 
federates  learned  of  the  evacuation  of  Harrison's 
Landing. 

When  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  was  ordered  to  be 
withdrawn  it  was  clearly  enough  seen  that  the  move 
ment  might  put  the  Army  of  Virginia  in  jeopardy; 
but  it  was  hoped  that  if  the  transfer  to  Acquia  Creek 
and  Alexandria  were  made  as  promptly  as  the  order 
contemplated,  the  two  armies  would  be  united  before 
the  enemy  could  reach  them.  McClellan,  however,  con 
tinued  day  after  day  to  protest  against  the  change,  and 
made  his  preparations  and  embarkation  with  such  ex 
asperating  slowness  as  showed  that  he  still  hoped  to 
induce  the  government  to  change  its  plans. 

Pope,  despite  the  fact  that  he  had  managed  his  re 
treat  with  skill  and  bravery,  was  attacked  by  Lee's 


THE  CABINET  PROTEST  311 

army,  and  fought  the  second  battle  of  Bull  Run  on 
August  30,  under  the  disadvantage  of  having  one  of 
McClellan's  divisions  entirely  absent  and  the  other 
failing  to  respond  to  his  order  to  advance  to  the  attack 
on  the  first  day.  McClellan  had  reached  Alexandria 
on  August  24;  and  notwithstanding  telegram  after 
telegram  from  Halleck,  ordering  him  to  push  Frank 
lin's  division  out  to  Pope's  support,  excuse  and  delay 
seemed  to  be  his  only  response,  ending  at  last  in  his 
direct  suggestion  that  Franklin's  division  be  kept  to 
defend  Washington,  and  Pope  be  left  to  "get  out  of  his 
scrape"  as  best  he  might. 

McClellan's  conduct  and  language  had  awakened 
the  indignation  of  the  whole  cabinet,  roused  Stanton  to 
fury,  and  greatly  outraged  the  feelings  of  President 
Lincoln.  But  even  under  such  irritation  the  President 
was,  as  ever,  the  very  incarnation  of  cool,  dispassion 
ate  judgment,  allowing  nothing  but  the  daily  and 
hourly  logic  of  facts  to  influence  his  suggestions  or 
decision.  In  these  moments  of  crisis  and  danger  he 
felt  more  keenly  than  ever  the  awful  responsibilities 
of  rulership,  and  that  the  fate  of  the  nation  hung  upon 
his  words  and  acts  from  hour  to  hour. 

His  official  counselors,  equally  patriotic  and  sincere, 
were  not  his  equals  in  calmness  of  temper.  On  Friday, 
August  29,  Stanton  went  to  Chase,  and  after  an  ex 
cited  conference  drew  up  a  memorandum  of  protest, 
to  be  signed  by  the  members  of  the  cabinet,  which 
drew  a  gloomy  picture  of  present  and  apprehended  dan 
gers,  and  recommended  the  immediate  removal  of  Mc 
Clellan  from  command.  Chase  and  Stanton  signed 
the  paper,  as  also  did  Bates,  whom  they  immediately 
consulted,  and  somewhat  later  Smith  added  his  signa 
ture.  But  when  they  presented  it  to  Welles,  he  firmly 
refused,  stating  that  though  he  concurred  with  them 


312  ABRAHAM   LINCOLN 

in  judgment,  it  would  be  discourteous  and  unfriendly 
to  the  President  to  adopt  such  a  course.  They  did  not 
go  to  Seward  and  Blair,  apparently  believing  them  to 
be  friendly  to  McClellan,  and  therefore  probably  un 
willing  to  give  their  assent.  The  refusal  of  Mr. 
Welles  to  sign  had  evidently  caused  a  more  serious 
discussion  among  them  about  the  form  and  language 
of  the  protest;  for  on  Monday,  September  i,  it  was 
entirely  rewritten  by  Bates,  cut  down  to  less  than  half 
its  original  length  as  drafted  by  Stanton,  and  once  more 
signed  by  the  same  four  members  of  J:  he  cabinet. 

Presented  for  the  second  time  to  Mr.  Welles,  he  re 
iterated  his  objection,  and  again  refused  his  signa 
ture.  Though  in  the  new  form  it  bore  the  signatures 
of  a  majority  of  the  cabinet,  the  paper  was  never  pre 
sented  to  Mr.  Lincoln.  The  signers  may  have  adopted 
the  feeling  of  Mr.  Welles  that  it  was  discourteous; 
or  they  may  have  thought  that  with  only  four  mem 
bers  of  the  cabinet  for  it  and  three  against  it,  it  would 
be  ineffectual ;  or,  more  likely  than  either,  the  mere 
progress  of  events  may  have  brought  them  to  con 
sider  it  inexpedient. 

The  defeat  of  Pope  became  final  and  conclusive  on 
the  afternoon  of  August  30,  and  his  telegram  announc 
ing  it  conveyed  an  intimation  that  he  had  lost  control 
of  his  army.  President  Lincoln  had,  therefore,  to  con 
front  a  most  serious  crisis  and  danger.  Even  without 
having  seen  the  written  and  signed  protest,  he  was 
well  aware  of  the  feelings  of  the  cabinet  against  Mc 
Clellan.  With  what  began  to  look  like  a  serious  con 
spiracy  among  McClellan's  officers  against  Pope,  with 
Pope's  army  in  a  disorganized  retreat  upon  Washing 
ton,  with  the  capital  in  possible  danger  of  capture  by 
Lee,  and  with  a  distracted  and  half -mutinous  cabinet, 
the  President  had  need  of  all  his  caution  and  all  his 


ORDER   OF   SEPTEMBER   2  313 

wisdom.  Both  his  patience  and  his  judgment  proved 
equal  to  the  demand. 

On  Monday,  September  i,  repressing  every  feeling 
of  indignation,  and  solicitous  only  to  make  every  ex 
pedient  contribute  to  the  public  safety,  he  called  Mc- 
Clellan  from  Alexandria  to  Washington  and  asked  him 
to  use  his  personal  influence  with  the  officers  who  had 
been  under  his  command  to  give  a  hearty  and  loyal 
support  to  Pope  as  a  personal  favor  to  their  former 
general,  and  McClellan  at  once  sent  a  telegram  in  this 
spirit. 

That  afternoon,  also,  Mr.  Lincoln  despatched  a 
member  of  General  Hal  leek's  staff  to  the  Virginia  side 
of  the  Potomac,  who  reported  the  disorganization  and 
discouragement  among  the  retreating  troops  as  even 
more  than  had  been  expected.  Worse  than  all,  Hal- 
leek,  the  general-in-chief,  who  was  much  worn  out  by 
the  labors  of  the  past  few  days,  seemed  either  unable 
or  unwilling  to  act  with  prompt  direction  and  com 
mand  equal  to  the  emergency,  though  still  willing  to 
give  his  advice  and  suggestion. 

Under  such  conditions,  Mr.  Lincoln  saw  that  it  was 
necessary  for  him  personally  to  exercise  at  the  moment 
his  military  functions  and  authority  as  commander- 
in-chief  of  the  army  and  navy.  On  the  morning  of 
September  2,  therefore,  he  gave  a  verbal  order,  which 
during  the  day  was  issued  in  regular  form  as  coming 
from  the  general-in-chief,  that  Major-General  Mc 
Clellan  be  placed  in  command  of  the  fortifications 
around  Washington  and  the  troops  for  the  defense  of 
the  capital.  Mr.  Lincoln  made  no  concealment  of  his 
belief  that  McClellan  had  acted  badly  toward  Pope  and 
really  wanted  him  to  fail ;  "but  there  is  no  one  in  the 
army  who  can  man  these  fortifications  and  lick  these 
troops  of  ours  into  shape  half  as  well  as  he  can/'  he 


3H  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

said.     "We  must  use  the  tools  we  have;  if  he  cannot 
fight   himself,   he   excels   in   making  others   ready  to 

fight." 

It  turned  out  that  the  second  battle  of  Bull  Run  had 
by  no  means  so  seriously  disorganized  the  Union  army 
as  was  reported,  and  that  Washington  had  been  ex 
posed  to  no  real  danger.  The  Confederate  army  hov 
ered  on  its  front  for  a  day  or  two,  but  made  neither 
attack  nor  demonstration.  Instead  of  this,  Lee  entered 
upon  a  campaign  into  Maryland,  hoping  that  his  pres 
ence  might  stimulate  a  secession  revolt  in  that  State, 
and  possibly  create  the  opportunity  successfully  to 
attack  Baltimore  or  Philadelphia. 

Pope  having  been  relieved  and  sent  to  another  de 
partment,  McClellan  soon  restored  order  among  the 
troops,  and  displayed  unwonted  energy  and  vigilance 
in  watching  the  movements  of  the  enemy,  as  Lee  grad 
ually  moved  his  forces  northwestward  toward  Lees- 
burg,  thirty  miles  from  Washington,  where  he  crossed 
the  Potomac  and  took  position  at  Frederick,  ten  miles 
farther  away.  McClellan  gradually  followed  the 
movement  of  the  enemy,  keeping  the  Army  of  the 
Potomac  constantly  in  a  position  to  protect  both  Wash 
ington  and  Baltimore  against  an  attack.  In  this  way 
it  happened  that  without  any  order  or  express  inten 
tion  on  the  part  of  either  the  general  or  the  President, 
McClellan's  duty  became  imperceptibly  changed  from 
that  of  merely  defending  Washington  city  to  that  of 
an  active  campaign  into  Maryland  to  follow  the  Con 
federate  army. 

This  movement  into  Maryland  was  begun  by  both 
armies  about  September  4.  On  the  thirteenth  of  that 
month  McClellan  had  reached  Frederick,  while  Lee 
was  by  that  time  across  the  Catoctin  range  at  Boons- 
boro',  but  his  army  was  divided.  He  had  sent  a  large 


BATTLE   OF   ANTIETAM  315 

part  of  it  back  across  the  Potomac  to  capture  Harper's 
Ferry  and  Martinsburg.  On  that  day  there  fell  into 
McClellan's  hands  the  copy  of  an  order  issued  by  Gen 
eral  Lee  three  days  before,  which,  as  McClellan  himself 
states  in  his  report,  fully  disclosed  Lee's  plans.  The 
situation  was  therefore,  as  follows :  It  was  splendid 
September  weather,  with  the  roads  in  fine  condition. 
McClellan  commanded  a  total  moving  force  of  more 
than  eighty  thousand ;  Lee,  a  total  moving  force  of 
forty  thousand.  The  Confederate  army  was  divided. 
Each  of  the  separate  portions  was  within  twenty  miles 
of  the  Union  columns;  and  before  half-past  six  on  the 
evening  of  September  13,  McClellan  had  full  know 
ledge  of  the  enemy's  plans. 

General  Palfrey,  an  intelligent  critic  friendly  to 
McClellan,  distinctly  admits  that  the  Union  army, 
properly  commanded,  could  have  absolutely  annihilated 
the  Confederate  forces.  But  the  result  proved  quite 
different.  Even  such  advantages  in  McClellan's  hands 
failed  to  rouse  him  to  vigorous  and  decisive  action. 
As  usual,  hesitation  and  tardiness  characterized  the 
orders  and  movements  of  the  Union  forces,  and  during 
the  four  days  succeeding,  Lee  had  captured  Harper's 
Ferry  with  eleven  thousand  prisoners  and  seventy- 
three  pieces  of  artillery,  reunited  his  army,  and  fought 
the  defensive  battle  of  Antietam  on  September  17, 
with  almost  every  Confederate  soldier  engaged,  while 
one  third  of  McClellan's  army  was  not  engaged  at  all 
and  the  remainder  went  into  action  piecemeal  and  suc 
cessively,  under  such  orders  that  cooperative  move 
ment  and  mutual  support  were  practically  impossible. 
Substantially,  it  was  a  drawn  battle,  with  appalling 
slaughter  on  both  sides. 

Even  after  such  a  loss  of  opportunity,  there  still  re 
mained  a  precious  balance  of  advantage  in  McClellan's 


316  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

hands.  Because  of  its  smaller  total  numbers,  the  Con 
federate  army  was  disproportionately  weakened  by 
the  losses  in  battle.  The  Potomac  River  was  almost 
immediately  behind  it,  and  had  McClellan  renewed 
his  attack  on  the  morning  of  the  eighteenth,  as  several 
of  his  best  officers  advised,  a  decisive  victory  was  yet 
within  his  grasp.  But  with  his  usual  hesitation,  not 
withstanding  the  arrival  of  two  divisions  of  reinforce 
ments,  he  waited  all  day  to  make  up  his  mind.  He  in 
deed  gave  orders  to  renew  the  attack  at  daylight  on 
the  nineteenth,  but  before  that  time  the  enemy  had 
retreated  across  the  Potomac,  and  McClellan  tele 
graphed,  apparently  with  great  satisfaction,  that  Mary 
land  was  free  and  Pennsylvania  safe. 

The  President  watched  the  progress  of  this  cam 
paign  with  an  eagerness  born  of  the  lively  hope  that 
it  might  end  the  war.  He  sent  several  telegrams  to  the 
startled  Pennsylvania  authorities  to  assure  them  that 
Philadelphia  and  Harrisburg  were  in  no  danger.  He 
ordered  a  reinforcement  of  twenty-one  thousand  to 
join  McClellan.  He  sent  a  prompting  telegram  to  that 
general :  " Please  do  not  let  him  [the  enemy]  get  off 
without  being  hurt."  He  recognized  the  battle  of 
Antietam  as  a  substantial,  if  not  a  complete  victory,  and 
seized  the  opportunity  it  afforded  him  to  issue  his  pre 
liminary  proclamation  of  emancipation  on  Septem 
ber  22. 

For  two  weeks  after  the  battle  of  Antietam,  Gen 
eral  McClellan  kept  his  army  camped  on  various  parts 
of  the  field,  and  so  far  from  exhibiting  any  disposition 
of  advancing  against  the  enemy  in  the  Shenandoah 
valley,  showed  constant  apprehension  lest  the  enemy 
might  come  and  attack  him.  On  October  i,  the  Presi 
dent  and  several  friends  made  a  visit  to  Antietam,  and 
during  the  three  succeeding  days  reviewed  the  troops 


"McCLELLAN'S   BODY-GUARD"        317 

and  went  over  the  various  battle-grounds  in  company 
with  the  general.  The  better  insight  which  the  Presi 
dent  thus  received  of  the  nature  and  results  of  the  late 
battle  served  only  to  deepen  in  his  mind  the  conviction 
he  had  long  entertained — how  greatly  McClellan's  de 
fects  overbalanced  his  merits  as  a  military  leader;  and 
his  impatience  found  vent  in  a  phrase  of  biting  irony. 
In  a  morning  walk  with  a  friend,  waving  his  arm  tow 
ard  the  white  tents  of  the  great  army,  he  asked:  "Do 
you  know  what  that  is?"  The  friend,  not  catching 
the  drift  of  his  thought,  said,  "It  is  the  Army  of  the 
Potomac,  I  suppose."  "So  it  is  called,"  responded  the 
President,  in  a  tone  of  suppressed  indignation,  "But 
that  is  a  mistake.  It  is  only  McClellan's  body-guard." 

At  that  time  General  McClellan  commanded  a  total 
force  of  one  hundred  thousand  men  present  for  duty 
under  his  immediate  eye,  and  seventy-three  thousand 
present  for  duty  under  General  Banks  about  Wash 
ington.  It  is,  therefore,  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  on 
October  6,  the  second  day  after  Mr.  Lincoln's  return 
to  Washington,  the  following  telegram  went  to  the 
general  from  Halleck : 

"I  am  instructed  to  telegraph  you  as  follows :  The 
President  directs  that  you  cross  the  Potomac  and  give 
battle  to  the  enemy,  or  drive  him  south.  Your  army 
must  move  now  while  the  roads  are  good.  If  you 
cross  the  river  between  the  enemy  and  Washington, 
and  cover  the  latter  by  your  operation,  you  can  be  re 
inforced  with  thirty  thousand  men.  If  you  move  up 
the  valley  of  the  Shenandoah,  not  more  than  twelve 
thousand  or  fifteen  thousand  can  be  sent  to  you.  The 
President  advises  the  interior  line,  between  Wash 
ington  and  the  enemy,  but  does  not  order  it.  He  is 
very  desirous  that  your  army  move  as  soon  as  pos 
sible.  You  will  immediately  report  what  line  you 


318  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

adopt,  and  when  you  intend  to  cross  the  river;  also  to 
what  point  the  reinforcements  are  to  be  sent.  It  is 
necessary  that  the  plan  of  your  operations  be  positively 
determined  on  before  orders  are  given  for  building 
bridges  and  repairing  railroads.  I  am  directed  to  add 
that  the  Secretary  of  War  and  the  general-in-chief 
fully  concur  with  the  President  in  these  instructions." 

This  express  order  was  reinforced  by  a  long  letter 
from  the  President,  dated  October  13,  specifically 
pointing  out  the  decided  advantages  McClellan  pos 
sessed  over  the  enemy,  and  suggesting  a  plan  of  cam 
paign  even  to  details,  the  importance  and  value  of 
which  was  self-evident. 

"You  remember  my  speaking  to  you  of  what  I  called 
your  over-cautiousness.  Are  you  not  over-cautious 
when  you  assume  that  you  cannot  do  what  the  enemy  is 
constantly  doing?  Should  you  not  claim  to  be  at  least 
his  equal  in  prowess,  and  act  upon  the  claim?  . 
Change  positions  with  the  enemy,  and  think  you  not 
he  would  break  your  communication  with  Richmond 
within  the  next  twenty-four  hours?  You  dread  his 
going  into  Pennsylvania,  but  if  he  does  so  in  full  force, 
he  gives  up  his  communications  to  you  absolutely,  and 
you  have  nothing  to  do  but  to  follow  and  ruin  him.  If 
he  does  so  with  less  than  full  force,  fall  upon  and  beat 
what  is  left  behind  all  the  easier.  Exclusive  of  the 
water-line,  you  are  now  nearer  Richmond  than  the  en 
emy  is  by  the  route  that  you  can  and  he  must  take. 
Why  can  you  not  reach  there  before  him,  unless  you 
admit  that  he  is  more  than  your  equal  on  a  march? 
His  route  is  the  arc  of  a  circle,  while  yours  is  the 
chord.  The  roads  are  as  good  on  yours  as  on  his. 
You  know  I  desired,  but  did  not  order,  you  to  cross 
the  Potomac  below  instead  of  above  the  Shenandoah 
and  Blue  Ridge.  My  idea  was  that  this  would  at  once 


McCLELLAN    REMOVED  319 

menace  the  enemy's  communications,  which  I  would 
seize,  if  he  would  permit.  If  he  should  move  north 
ward  I  would  follow  him  closely,  holding  his  com 
munications.  If  he  should  prevent  our  seizing  his 
communications  and  move  toward  Richmond,  I  would 
press  closely  to  him,  fight  him,  if  a  favorable  opportu 
nity  should  present,  and  at  least  try  to  beat  him  to 
Richmond  on  the  inside  track.  I  say  'try' ;  if  we  never 
try  we  shall  never  succeed.  If  he  makes  a  stand  at 
Winchester,  moving  neither  north  nor  south,  I  would 
fight  him  there,  on  the  idea  that  if  we  cannot  beat  him 
when  he  bears  the  wastage  of  coming  to  us,  we  never 
can  when  we  bear  the  wastage  of  going  to  him." 

But  advice,  expostulation,  argument,  orders,  were  all 
wasted,  now  as  before,  on  the  unwilling,  hesitating 
general.  When  he  had  frittered  away  another  full 
month  in  preparation,  in  slowly  crossing  the  Potomac, 
and  in  moving  east  of  the  Blue  Ridge  and  massing  his 
army  about  Warrenton,  a  short  distance  south  of  the 
battle-field  of  Bull  Run,  without  a  vigorous  offensive, 
or  any  discernible  intention  to  make  one,  the  Presi 
dent's  patience  was  finally  exhausted,  and  on  November 
5  he  sent  him  an  order  removing  him  from  command. 
And  so  ended  General  McClellan's  military  career. 


XXIII 

Cameron's  Report — Lincoln's  Letter  to  Bancroft — Annual 
Message  on  Slavery — The  Delaware  Experiment — 
Joint  Resolution  on  Compensated  Abolishment — First 
Border  State  Interview — St evens' s  Comment — District 
of  Columbia  Abolishment — Committee  on  Abolishment 
—Hunter's  Order  Revoked — Antislavery  Measures  of 
Congress — Second  Border  State  Interview — Emancipa 
tion  Proposed  and  Postponed 

THE  relation  of  the  war  to  the  institution  of  slavery 
has  been  touched  upon  in  describing  several  in 
cidents  which  occurred  during  1861,  namely,  the  desig 
nation  of  fugitive  slaves  as  "contraband,"  the  Critten- 
den  resolution  and  the  confiscation  act  of  the  special 
session  of  Congress,  the  issuing  and  revocation  of 
Fremont's  proclamation,  and  various  orders  relating 
to  contrabands  in  Union  camps.  The  already  men 
tioned  resignation  of  Secretary  Cameron  had  also 
growrn  out  of  a  similar  question.  In  the  form  in  which 
it  was  first  printed,  his  report  as  Secretary  of  War  to 
the  annual  session  of  Congress  which  met  on  Decem 
ber  3,  1 86 1,  announced: 

"If  it  shall  be  found  that  the  men  who  have  been  held 
by  the  rebels  as  slaves  are  capable  of  bearing  arms  and 
performing  efficient  military  service,  it  is  the  right, 
and  may  become  the  duty,  of  the  government  to  arm 
and  equip  them,  and  employ  their  services  against  the 
rebels,  under  proper  military  regulation,  discipline,  and 
command." 


LETTER  TO  BANCROFT  321 

The  President  was  not  prepared  to  permit  a  member 
of  his  cabinet,  without  his  consent,  to  commit  the  ad 
ministration  to  so  radical  a  policy  at  that  early  date. 
He  caused  the  advance  copies  of  the  document  to  be 
recalled  and  modified  to  the  simple  declaration  that 
fugitive  and  abandoned  slaves,  being  clearly  an  impor 
tant  military  resource,  should  not  be  returned  to  rebel 
masters,  but  withheld  from  the  enemy  to  be  disposed 
of  in  future  as  Congress  might  deem  best.  Mr.  Lin 
coln  saw  clearly  enough  what  a  serious  political  role 
the  slavery  question  was  likely  to  play  during  the  con 
tinuance  of  the  war.  Replying  to  a  letter  from  the 
Hon.  George  Bancroft,  in  which  that  accomplished 
historian  predicted  that  posterity  would  not  be  satis 
fied  with  the  results  of  the  war  unless  it  should 
effect  an  increase  of  the  free  States,  the  President 
wrote : 

"The  main  thought  in  the  closing  paragraph  of 
your  letter  is  one  which  does  not  escape  my  attention, 
and  with  which  I  must  deal  in  all  due  caution,  and  with 
the  best  judgment  I  can  bring  to  it." 

This  caution  was  abundantly  manifested  in  his  an 
nual  message  to  Congress  of  December  3,  1861  : 

"In  considering  the  policy  to  be  adopted  for  sup 
pressing  the  insurrection,"  he  wrote,  "I  have  been  anx 
ious  and  careful  that  the  inevitable  conflict  for  this 
purpose  shall  not  degenerate  into  a  violent  and  remorse 
less  revolutionary  struggle.  I  have,  therefore,  in  every 
case,  thought  it  proper  to  keep  the  integrity  of  the 
Union  prominent  as  the  primary  object  of  the  contest 
on  our  part,  leaving  all  questions  which  are  not  of  vital 
military  importance  to  the  more  deliberate  action  of 
the  legislature.  .  .  .  The  Union  must  be  pre 
served  ;  and  hence  all  indispensable  means  must  be  em 
ployed.  We  should  not  be  in  haste  to  determine  that 

21 


322  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

radical  and  extreme  measures,  which  may  reach  the 
loyal  as  well  as  the  disloyal,  are  indispensable." 

The  most  conservative  opinion  could  not  take  alarm 
at  phraseology  so  guarded  and  at  the  same  time  so  de 
cided;  and  yet  it  proved  broad  enough  to  include 
every  great  exigency  which  the  conflict  still  had  in 
store. 

Mr.  Lincoln  had  indeed  already  maturely  consid 
ered  and  in  his  own  mind  adopted  a  plan  of  dealing 
with  the  slavery  question :  the  simple  plan  which,  while 
a  member  of  Congress,  he  had  proposed  for  adoption 
in  the  District  of  Columbia — the  plan  of  voluntary 
compensated  abolishment.  At  that  time  local  and 
national  prejudice  stood  in  the  way  of  its  practicability; 
but  to  his  logical  and  reasonable  mind  it  seemed  now 
that  the  new  conditions  opened  for  it  a  prospect  at 
least  of  initial  success. 

In  the  late  presidential  election  the  little  State  of 
Delaware  had,  by  a  fusion  between  the  Bell  and  the 
Lincoln  vote,  chosen  a  Union  member  of  Congress, 
who  identified  himself  in  thought  and  action  with  the 
new  administration.  While  Delaware  was  a  slave 
State,  only  the  merest  remnant  of  the  institution  ex 
isted  there — seventeen  hundred  and  ninety-eight  slaves 
all  told.  Without  any  public  announcement  of  his 
purpose,  the  President  now  proposed  to  the  political 
leaders  of  Delaware,  through  their  representative,  a 
scheme  for  the  gradual  emancipation  of  these  seven 
teen  hundred  and  ninety-eight  slaves,  on  the  payment 
therefor  by  the  United  States  at  the  rate  of  four  hun 
dred  dollars  per  slave,  in  annual  instalments  during 
thirty-one  years  to  that  State,  the  sum  to  be  distributed 
by  it  to  the  individual  owners.  The  President  believed 
that  if  Delaware  could  be  induced  to  take  this  step, 
Maryland  might  follow,  and  that  these  examples  would 


GRADUAL  EMANCIPATION  323 

create  a  sentiment  that  would  lead  other  States  into  the 
same  easy  and  beneficent  path.  But  the  ancient  preju 
dice  still  had  its  relentless  grip  upon  some  of  the  Dela 
ware  law-makers.  A  majority  of  the  Delaware  House 
indeed  voted  to  entertain  the  scheme.  But  five  of  the 
nine  members  of  the  Delaware  Senate,  with  hot  parti- 
zan  anathemas,  scornfully  repelled  the  "abolition 
bribe,"  as  they  called  it,  and  the  project  withered  in 
the  bud. 

Mr.  Lincoln  did  not  stop  at  the  failure  of  his  Dela 
ware  experiment,  but  at  once  took  an  appeal  to  a 
broader  section  of  public  opinion.  On  March  6,  1862, 
he  sent  a  special  message  to  the  two  houses  of  Congress 
recommending  the  adoption  of  the  following  joint  reso 
lution  : 

"Resolved,  that  the  United  States  ought  to  cooperate 
with  any  State  which  may  adopt  gradual  abolishment 
of  slavery,  giving  to  such  State  pecuniary  aid,  to  be 
used  by  such  State,  in  its  discretion,  to  compensate  for 
the  inconveniences,  public  and  private,  produced  by 
such  change  of  system." 

"The  point  is  not,"  said  his  explanatory  message, 
"that  all  the  States  tolerating  slavery  would  very  soon, 
if  at  all,  initiate  emancipation ;  but  that  while  the  offer 
is  equally  made  to  all,  the  more  northern  shall,  by  such 
initiation,  make  it  certain  to  the  more  southern  that  in 
no  event  will  the  former  ever  join  the  latter  in  their 
proposed  Confederacy.  I  say  'initiation'  because,  in 
my  judgment, gradual,  and  not  sudden,  emancipation  is 
better  for  all.  .  .  .  Such  a  proposition  on  the  part 
of  the  general  government  sets  up  no  claim  of  a  right 
by  Federal  authority  to  interfere  with  slavery  within 
State  limits,  referring,  as  it  does,  the  absolute  control 
of  the  subject  in  each  case  to  the  State  and  its  people 
immediately  interested.  It  is  proposed  as  a  matter 


324  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

of  perfectly  free  choice  with  them.  In  the  annual 
message  last  December  I  thought  fit  to  say,  The  Union 
must  be  preserved ;  and  hence,  all  indispensable  means 
must  be  employed.'  I  said  this,  not  hastily,  but  delib 
erately.  War  has  been  made,  and  continues  to  be,  an 
indispensable  means  to  this  end.  A  practical  reac- 
knowledgment  of  the  national  authority  would  render 
the  war  unnecessary,  and  it  would  at  once  cease.  If, 
however,  resistance  continues,  the  war  must  also  con 
tinue;  and  it  is  impossible  to  foresee  all  the  incidents 
which  may  attend  and  all  the  ruin  which  may  follow 
it.  Such  as  may  seem  indispensable,  or  may  obviously 
promise  great  efficiency  toward  ending  the  struggle, 
must  and  will  come." 

The  Republican  journals  of  the  North  devoted  con 
siderable  discussion  to  the  President's  message  and 
plan,  which,  in  the  main,  were  very  favorably  received. 
Objection  was  made,  however,  in  some  quarters  that  the 
proposition  would  be  likely  to  fail  on  the  score  of  ex 
pense,  and  this  objection  the  President  conclusively 
answered  in  a  private  letter  to  a  senator. 

"As  to  the  expensiveness  of  the  plan  of  gradual 
emancipation,  with  compensation,  proposed  in  the  late 
message,  please  allow  me  one  or  two  brief  suggestions. 
Less  than  one  half-day's  cost  of  this  war  would  pay  for 
all  the  slaves  in  Delaware  at  four  hundred  dollars  per 
head.  .  .  .  Again,  less  than  eighty-seven  days' 
cost  of  this  war  would,  at  the  same  price,  pay  for  all 
in  Delaware,  Maryland,  District  of  Columbia,  Ken 
tucky,  and  Missouri.  .  .  .  Do  you  doubt  that  tak 
ing  the  initiatory  steps  on  the  part  of  those  States  and 
this  District  would  shorten  the  war  more  than  eighty- 
seven  days,  and  thus  be  an  actual  saving  of  expense?" 

Four  days  after  transmitting  the  message  the  Presi 
dent  called  together  the  delegations  in  Congress  from 


JOINT   RESOLUTION  325 

the  border  slave  States,  and  in  a  long  and  earnest  per 
sonal  interview,  in  which  he  repeated  and  enforced  the 
arguments  of  his  message,  urged  upon  them  the  expe 
diency  of  adopting  his  plan,  which  he  assured  them  he 
had  proposed  in  the  most  friendly  spirit,  and  with  no 
intent  to  injure  the  interests  or  wound  the  sensibilities 
of  the  slave  States.  On  the  day  following  this  inter 
view  the  House  of  Representatives  adopted  the  joint 
resolution  by  more  than  a  two-thirds  vote ;  ayes  eighty- 
nine,  nays  thirty-one.  Only  a  very  few  of  the  border 
State  members  had  the  courage  to  vote  in  the  affirma 
tive.  The  Senate  also  passed  the  joint  resolution,  by 
about  a  similar  party  division,  not  quite  a  month  later ; 
the  delay  occurring  through  press  of  business  rather 
than  unwillingness. 

As  yet,  however,  the  scheme  was  tolerated  rather 
than  heartily  indorsed  by  the  more  radical  elements  in 
Congress.  Stevens,  the  cynical  Republican  leader  of 
the  House  of  Representatives,  said : 

"I  confess  I  have  not  been  able  to  see  what  makes  one 
side  so  anxious  to  pass  it,  or  the  other  side  so  anxious 
to  defeat  it.  I  think  it  is  about  the  most  diluted  milk- 
and-water-gruel  proposition  that  was  ever  given  to  the 
American  nation." 

But  the  bulk  of  the  Republicans,  though  it  proposed 
no  immediate  practical  legislation,  nevertheless  voted 
for  it,  as  a  declaration  of  purpose  in  harmony  with  a 
pending  measure,  and  as  being,  on  the  one  hand,  a  trib 
ute  to  antislavery  opinion  in  the  North,  and,  on  the 
other,  an  expression  of  liberality  toward  the  border 
States.  The  concurrent  measure  of  practical  legislation 
was  a  bill  for  the  immediate  emancipation  of  the  slaves 
in  the  District  of  Columbia,  on  the  payment  to  their 
loyal  owners  of  an  average  sum  of  three  hundred  dol 
lars  for  each  slave,  and  for  the  appointment  of  a  com- 


326  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

mission  to  assess  and  award  the  amount.  The  bill  was 
introduced  early  in  the  session,  and  its  discussion  was 
much  stimulated  by  the  President's  special  message 
and  joint  resolution.  Like  other  antislavery  measures, 
it  was  opposed  by  the  Democrats  and  supported  by  the 
Republicans,  with  but  trifling  exceptions;  and  by  the 
same  majority  of  two  thirds  was  passed  by  the  Senate 
on  April  3,  and  the  House  on  April  n,  and  became  a 
law  by  the  President's  signature  on  April  16. 

The  Republican  majority  in  Congress  as  well  as  the 
President  was  thus  pledged  to  the  policy  of  compen 
sated  abolishment,  both  by  the  promise  of  the  joint 
resolution  and  the  fulfilment  carried  out  in  the  Dis 
trict  bill.  If  the  representatives  and  senators  of  the 
border  slave  States  had  shown  a  willingness  to  accept 
the  generosity  of  the  government,  they  could  have 
avoided  the  pecuniary  sacrifice  which  overtook  the 
slave  owners  in  those  States  not  quite  three  years  later. 
On  April  14,  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  the  sub 
ject  was  taken  up  by  Mr.  White  of  Indiana,  at  whose 
instance  a  select  committee  on  emancipation,  consisting 
of  nine  members,  a  majority  of  whom  were  from 
border  slave  States,  was  appointed ;  and  this  committee 
on  July  1 6  reported  a  comprehensive  bill  authorizing 
the  President  to  give  compensation  at  the  rate  of  three 
hundred  dollars  for  each  slave  to  any  one  of  the  States 
of  Delaware,  Maryland,  Virginia,  Kentucky,  Tennes 
see,  and  Missouri,  that  might  adopt  immediate  or  grad 
ual  emancipation.  Some  subsequent  proceedings  on 
this  subject  occurred  in  Congress  in  the  case  of  Mis 
souri  ;  but  as  to  the  other  States  named  in  the  bill,  either 
the  neglect  or  open  opposition  of  their  people  and  rep 
resentatives  and  senators  prevented  any  further  action 
from  the  committee. 

Meanwhile  a  new  incident  once  more  brought  the 


HUNTER'S  ORDER  REVOKED         327 

question  of  military  emancipation  into  sharp  public 
discussion.  On  May  9,  General  David  Hunter,  com 
manding  the  Department  of  the  South,  which  consisted 
mainly  of  some  sixty  or  seventy  miles  of  the  South 
Carolina  coast  between  North  Edisto  River  and  War 
saw  Sound,  embracing  the  famous  Sea  Island  cotton 
region  which  fell  into  Union  hands  by  the  capture  of 
Port  Royal  in  1861,  issued  a  military  order  which 
declared : 

"Slavery  and  martial  law  in  a  free  country  are  alto 
gether  incompatible;  the  persons  in  these  three  States 
— Georgia,  Florida,  and  South  Carolina — heretofore 
held  as  slaves  are  therefore  declared  forever  free." 

The  news  of  this  order,  coming  by  the  slow  course 
of  ocean  mails,  greatly  surprised  Mr.  Lincoln,  and  his 
first  comment  upon  it  was  positive  and  emphatic. 
"No  commanding  general  shall  do  such  a  thing,  upon 
my  responsibility,  without  consulting  me,"  he  wrote  to 
Secretary  Chase.  Three  days  later,  May  19,  1862, 
he  published  a  proclamation  declaring  Hunter's  order 
entirely  unauthorized  and  void,  and  adding: 

"I  further  make  known  that  whether  it  be  compe 
tent  for  me,  as  commander-in-chief  of  the  army  and 
navy,  to  declare  the  slaves  of  any  State  or  States  free, 
and  whether,  at  any  time,  in  any  case,  it  shall  have 
become  a  necessity  indispensable  to  the  maintenance 
of  the  government  to  exercise  such  supposed  power, 
are  questions  which,  under  my  responsibility,  I  reserve 
to  myself,  and  which  I  cannot  feel  justified  in  leaving 
to  the  decision  of  commanders  in  the  field.  These  are 
totally  different  questions  from  those  of  police  regula 
tions  in  armies  and  camps." 

This  distinct  reservation  of  executive  power,  and 
equally  plain  announcement  of  the  contingency  which 
would  justify  its  exercise,  was  coupled  with  a  renewed 


328  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

recital  of  his  plan  and  offer  of  compensated  abolish 
ment,  and  reinforced  by  a  powerful  appeal  to  the  public 
opinion  of  the  border  slave  States. 

"I  do  not  argue/'  continued  the  proclamation,  "I 
beseech  you  to  make  the  arguments  for  yourselves. 
You  cannot,  if  you  would,  be  blind  to  the  signs  of  the 
times.  I  beg  of  you  a  calm  and  enlarged  considera 
tion  of  them,  ranging,  if  it  may  be,  far  above  personal 
and  partizan  politics.  This  proposal  makes  common 
cause  for  a  common  object,  casting  no  reproaches  upon 
any.  It  acts  not  the  Pharisee.  The  change  it  contem 
plates  would  come  gently  as  the  dews  of  heaven,  not 
rending  or  wrecking  anything.  Will  you  not  embrace 
it  ?  So  much  good  has  not  been  done,  by  one  effort,  in 
all  past  time,  as  in  the  providence  of  God  it  is  now 
your  high  privilege  to  do.  May  the  vast  future  not 
have  to  lament  that  you  have  neglected  it." 

This  proclamation  of  President  Lincoln's  naturally 
created  considerable  and  very  diverse  comment,  but 
much  less  than  would  have  occurred  had  not  military 
events  intervened  which  served  in  a  great  degree  to 
absorb  public  attention.  At  the  date  of  the  proclama 
tion  McClellan,  with  the  Army  of  the  Potomac,  was 
just  reaching  the  Chickahominy  in  his  campaign  to 
ward  Richmond;  Stonewall  Jackson  was  about  begin 
ning  his  startling  raid  into  the  Shenandoah  valley; 
and  Halleck  was  pursuing  his  somewhat  leisurely  cam 
paign  against  Corinth.  On  the  day  following  the 
proclamation  the  victorious  fleet  of  Farragut  reached 
Vicksburg  in  its  first  ascent  of  the  Mississippi.  Con 
gress  was  busy  with  the  multifarious  work  that 
crowded  the  closing  weeks  of  the  long  session;  and 
among  this  congressional  work  the  debates  and  pro 
ceedings  upon  several  measures  of  positive  and  imme 
diate  antislavery  legislation  were  significant  "signs  of 


ANTISLAVERY   MEASURES  329 

the  times."  During  the  session,  and  before  it  ended, 
acts  or  amendments  were  passed  prohibiting  the  army 
from  returning  fugitive  slaves;  recognizing  the  inde 
pendence  and  sovereignty  of  Haiti  and  Liberia;  pro 
viding  for  carrying  into  effect  the  treaty  with  England 
to  suppress  the  African  slave  trade ;  restoring  the  Mis 
souri  Compromise  and  extending  its  provisions  to  all 
United  States  Territories ;  greatly  increasing  the  scope 
of  the  confiscation  act  in  freeing  slaves  actually  em 
ployed  in  hostile  military  service;  and  giving  the 
President  authority,  if  not  in  express  terms,  at  least 
by  easy  implication,  to  organize  and  arm  negro  regi 
ments  for  the  war. 

But  between  the  President's  proclamation  and  the 
adjournment  of  Congress  military  affairs  underwent 
a  most  discouraging  change.  McClellan's  advance 
upon  Richmond  became  a  retreat  to  Harrison's  Land 
ing.  Halleck  captured  nothing  but  empty  forts  at 
Corinth.  Farragut  found  no  cooperation  at  Vicks- 
burg,  and  returned  to  New  Orleans,  leaving  its  hostile 
guns  still  barring  the  commerce  of  the  great  river. 
Still  worse,  the  country  was  plunged  into  gloomy  fore 
bodings  by  the  President's  call  for  three  hundred  thou 
sand  new7  troops. 

About  a  week  before  the  adjournment  of  Congress 
the  President  again  called  together  the  delegations 
from  the  border  slave  States,  and  read  to  them,  in  a 
carefully  prepared  paper,  a  second  and  most  urgent 
appeal  to  adopt  his  plan  of  compensated  abolishment. 

"Let  the  States  which  are  in  rebellion  see  definitely 
and  certainly  that  in  no  event  will  the  States  you  repre 
sent  ever  join  their  proposed  confederacy,  and  they 
cannot  much  longer  maintain  the  contest.  But  you 
cannot  divest  them  of  their  hope  to  ultimately  have  you 
with  them  so  long  as  you  show  a  determination  to  per- 


330  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

petuate  the  institution  within  your  own  States.  Beat 
them  at  elections,  as  you  have  overwhelmingly  done, 
and,  nothing  daunted,  they  still  claim  you  as  their  own. 
You  and  I  know  what  the  lever  of  their  power  is. 
Break  that  lever  before  their  faces,  and  they  can  shake 
you  no  more  forever.  ...  If  the  war  continues 
long,  as  it  must  if  the  object  be  not  sooner  attained,  the 
institution  in  your  States  will  be  extinguished  by  mere 
friction  and  abrasion — by  the  mere  incidents  of  the 
war.  It  will  be  gone,  and  you  will  have  nothing  valu 
able  in  lieu  of  it.  Much  of  its  value  is  gone  already. 
How  much  better  for  you  and  for  your  people  to  take 
the  step  which  at  once  shortens  the  war  and  secures 
substantial  compensation  for  that  which  is  sure  to  be 
wholly  lost  in  any  other  event.  How  much  better  to 
thus  save  the  money  which  else  we  sink  forever  in  the 
war.  .  .  .  Our  common  country  is  in  great  peril, 
demanding  the  loftiest  views  and  boldest  action  to 
bring  it  speedy  relief.  Once  relieved,  its  form  of  gov 
ernment  is  saved  to  the  world,  its  beloved  history  and 
cherished  memories  are  vindicated,  and  its  happy 
future  fully  assured  and  rendered  inconceivably  grand. 
To  you,  more  than  to  any  others,  the  privilege  is  given 
to  assure  that  happiness  and  swell  that  grandeur,  and 
to  link  your  own  names  therewith  forever." 

Even  while  the  delegations  listened,  Mr.  Lincoln 
could  see  that  events  had  not  yet  ripened  their  minds 
to  the  acceptance  of  his  proposition.  In  their  written 
replies,  submitted  a  few  days  afterward,  two  thirds  of 
them  united  in  a  qualified  refusal,  which,  while  rec 
ognizing  the  President's  patriotism  and  reiterating 
their  own  loyalty,  urged  a  number  of  rather  unsubstan 
tial  excuses.  The  minority  replies  promised  to  submit 
the  proposal  fairly  to  the  people  of  their  States,  but 
could  of  course  give  no  assurance  that  it  would  be  wel- 


EMANCIPATION   POSTPONED         331 

corned  by  their  constituents.  The  interview  itself  only 
served  to  confirm  the  President  in  an  alternative  course 
of  action  upon  which  his  mind  had  doubtless  dwelt  for 
a  considerable  time  with  intense  solicitude,  and  which 
is  best  presented  in  the  words  of  his  own  recital. 

"It  had  got  to  be/'  said  he,  in  a  conversation  with 
the  artist  F.  B.  Carpenter,  "midsummer,  1862.  Things 
had  gone  on  from  bad  to  worse,  until  I  felt  that  we  had 
reached  the  end  of  our  rope  on  the  plan  of  operations 
we  had  been  pursuing;  that  we  had  about  played  our 
last  card,  and  must  change  our  tactics,  or  lose  the 
game.  I  now  determined  upon  the  adoption  of  the 
emancipation  policy;  and,  without  consultation  with, 
or  the  knowledge  of,  the  cabinet,  I  prepared  the  origi 
nal  draft  of  the  proclamation,  and  after  much  anxious 
thought  called  a  cabinet  meeting  upon  the  subject. 
.  .  .  All  were  present  excepting  Mr.  Blair,  the 
Postmaster-General,  who  was  absent  at  the  opening  of 
the  discussion,  but  came  in  subsequently.  I  said  to  the 
cabinet  that  I  had  resolved  upon  this  step,  and  had  not 
called  them  together  to  ask  their  advice,  but  to  lay  the 
subject-matter  of  a  proclamation  before  them,  sug 
gestions  as  to  which  would  be  in  order  after  they  had 
heard  it  read." 

It  was  on  July  22  that  the  President  read  to  his  cabi 
net  the  draft  of  this  first  emancipation  proclamation, 
which,  after  a  formal  warning  against  continuing  the 
rebellion,  was  in  the  following  words : 

"And  I  hereby  make  known  that  it  is  my  purpose* 
upon  the  next  meeting  of  Congress,  to  again  recom 
mend  the  adoption  of  a  practical  measure  for  tendering 
pecuniary  aid  to  the  free  choice  or  rejection  of  any 
and  all  States  which  may  then  be  recognizing  and 
practically  sustaining  the  authority  of  the  United 
States,  and  which  may  then  ffave  voluntarily  adopted, 


332  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

or  thereafter  may  voluntarily  adopt,  gradual  abolish 
ment  of  slavery  within  such  State  or  States;  that  the 
object  is  to  practically  restore,  thenceforward  to  be 
maintained,  the  constitutional  relation  between  the  gen 
eral  government  and  each  and  all  the  States  wherein 
that  relation  is  now  suspended  or  disturbed;  and  that 
for  this  object  the  war,  as  it  has  been,  will  be  prose 
cuted.  And  as  a  fit  and  necessary  military  measure 
for  effecting  this  object,  I,  as  commander-in-chief  of 
the  army  and  navy  of  the  United  States,  do  order  and 
declare  that  on  the  first  day  of  January,  in  the  year  of 
our  Lord  one  thousand  eight  hundred  and  sixty-three, 
all  persons  held  as  slaves  within  any  State  or  States 
wherein  the  constitutional  authority  of  the  United 
States  shall  not  then  be  practically  recognized,  sub 
mitted  to,  and  maintained,  shall  then,  thenceforward, 
and  forever  be  free." 

Mr.  Lincoln  had  given  a  confidential  intimation  of 
this  step  to  Mr.  Seward  and  Mr.  Welles  on  the  day 
following  the  border  State  interview,  but  to  all  the 
other  members  of  the  cabinet  it  came  as  a  complete  sur 
prise.  Blair  thought  it  would  cost  the  administration 
the  fall  elections.  Chase  preferred  that  emancipation 
should  be  proclaimed  by  commanders  in  the  several 
military  districts.  Seward,  approving  the  measure, 
suggested  that  it  be  postponed  until  it  could  be  given  to 
the  country  supported  by  military  success,  instead  of 
issuing  it,  as  would  be  the  case  then,  upon  the  greatest 
disasters  of  the  war.  Mr.  Lincoln's  recital  continues : 

"The  wisdom  of  the  view  of  the  Secretary  of  State 
struck  me  with  very  great  force.  It  was  an  aspect  of 
the  case  that,  in  all  rny  thought  upon  the  subject,  I  had 
entirely  overlooked.  The  result  was  that  I  put  the 
draft  of  the  proclamation  aside,  as  you  do  your  sketch 
for  a  picture,  waiting  for  a  victory." 


XXIV 

Criticism  of  the  President  for  his  Action  on  Slavery — 
Lincoln's  Letters  to  Louisiana  Friends — Greeley's  Open 
Letter — Mr.  Lincoln's  Reply — Chicago  Clergymen 
Urge  Emancipation — Lincoln's  Answer — Lincoln  Is 
sues  Preliminary  Proclamation — President  Proposes 
Constitutional  Amendment — Cabinet  Considers  Final 
Proclamation — Cabinet  Discusses  Admission  of  West 
Virginia — Lincoln  Signs  Edict  of  Freedom — Lincoln's 
Letter  to  Hodges 

THE  secrets  of  the  government  were  so  well  kept 
that  no  hint  whatever  came  to  the  public  that  the 
President  had  submitted  to  the  cabinet  the  draft  of  an 
emancipation  proclamation.  Between  that  date  and  the 
battle  of  the  second  Bull  Run  intervened  the  period  of  a 
full  month,  during  which,  in  the  absence  of  military 
movements  or  congressional  proceedings  to  furnish 
exciting  news,  both  private  individuals  and  public 
journals  turned  a  new  and  somewhat  vindictive  fire  of 
criticism  upon  the  administration.  For  this  they 
seized  upon  the  ever-ready  text  of  the  ubiquitous  sla 
very  question.  Upon  this  issue  the  conservatives 
protested  indignantly  that  the  President  had  been  too 
fast,  while,  contrarywise,  the  radicals  clamored  loudly 
that  he  had  been  altogether  too  slow.  We  have  seen 
how  his  decision  was  unalterably  taken  and  his  course 
distinctly  marked  out,  but  that  he  was  not  yet  ready 
publicly  to  announce  it.  Therefore,  during  this  period 

333 


334  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

of  waiting  for  victory,  he  underwent  the  difficult 
task  of  restraining  the  impatience  of  both  sides, 
which  he  did  in  very  positive  language.  Thus, 
under  date  of  July  26,  1862,  he  wrote  to  a  friend  in 
Louisiana : 

"Yours  of  the  sixteenth,  by  the  hand  of  Governor 
Shepley,  is  received.  It  seems  the  Union  feeling  in 
Louisiana  is  being  crushed  out  by  the  course  of  Gen 
eral  Phelps.  Please  pardon  me  for  believing  that  is 
a  false  pretense.  The  people  of  Louisiana — all  intelli 
gent  people  everywhere — know  full  well  that  I  never 
had  a  wish  to  touch  the  foundations  of  their  society,  or 
any  right  of  theirs.  With  perfect  knowledge  of  this, 
they  forced  a  necessity  upon  me  to  send  armies  among 
them,  and  it  is  their  own  fault,  not  mine,  that  they  are 
annoyed  by  the  presence  of  General  Phelps.  They  also 
know  the  remedy — know  how  to  be  cured  of  General 
Phelps.  Remove  the  necessity  of  his  presence. 
I  am  a  patient  man — always  willing  to  forgive  on  the 
Christian  terms  of  repentance,  and  also  to  give  ample 
time  for  repentance.  Still,  I  must  save  this  govern 
ment,  if  possible.  What  I  cannot  do,  of  course  I  will 
not  do;  but  it  may  as  well  be  understood,  once  for  all, 
that  I  shall  not  surrender  this  game  leaving  any  avail 
able  card  unplayed." 

Two  days  later  he  answered  another  Louisiana 
critic : 

"Mr.  Durant  complains  that,  in  various  ways,  the 
relation  of  master  and  slave  is  disturbed  by  the  pres 
ence  of  our  army,  and  he  considers  it  particularly  vexa 
tious  that  this,  in  part,  is  done  under  cover  of  an  act 
of  Congress,  while  constitutional  guarantees  are  sus 
pended  on  the  plea  of  military  necessity.  The  truth 
is  that  what  is  done  and  omitted  about  slaves  is  done 


GREELEY'S   OPEN  LETTER  335 

and  omitted  on  the  same  military  necessity.  It  is  a 
military  necessity  to  have  men  and  money ;  and  we  can 
get  neither  in  sufficient  numbers  or  amounts  if  we 
keep  from  or  drive  from  our  lines  slaves  coming  to 
them.  Mr.  Durant  cannot  be  ignorant  of  the  pressure 
in  this  direction,  nor  of  my  efforts  to  hold  it  within 
bounds  till  he  and  such  as  he  shall  have  time  to  help 
themselves.  .  .  .  What  would  you  do  in  my  posi 
tion  ?  Would  you  drop  the  war  where  it  is  ?  Or  would 
you  prosecute  it  in  future  with  elder-stalk  squirts 
charged  with  rose-water?  Would  you  deal  lighter 
blows  rather  than  heavier  ones?  Would  you  give  up 
the  contest,  leaving  any  available  means  unapplied? 
I  am  in  no  boastful  mood.  I  shall  not  do  more  than 
I  can,  and  I  shall  do  all  I  can,  to  save  the  government, 
which  is  my  sworn  duty  as  well  as  my  personal  incli 
nation.  I  shall  do  nothing  in  malice.  What  I  deal 
with  is  too  vast  for  malicious  dealing." 

The  President  could  afford  to  overlook  the  misrep 
resentations  and  invective  of  the  professedly  opposition 
newspapers,  but  he  had  also  to  meet  the  over-zeal  of 
influential  Republican  editors  of  strong  antislavery 
bias.  Horace  Greeley  printed,  in  the  New  York 
"Tribune"  of  August  20,  a  long  "open  letter"  ostenta 
tiously  addressed  to  Mr.  Lincoln,  full  of  unjust  cen 
sure,  all  based  on  the  general  accusation  that  the  Presi 
dent,  and  many  army  officers  as  well,  were  neglecting 
their  duty  under  pro-slavery  influences  and  sentiments. 
The  open  letter  which  Mr.  Lincoln  wrote  in  reply  is 
remarkable  not  alone  for  the  skill  with  which  it  sepa 
rated  the  true  from  the  false  issue  of  the  moment,  but 
also  for  the  equipoise  and  dignity  with  which  it  main 
tained  his  authority  as  moral  arbiter  between  the  con 
tending  factions. 


336  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

"EXECUTIVE  MANSION,  WASHINGTON, 

August  22,  1862. 
"HoN.  HORACE  GREELEY. 

"DEAR  SIR  :  I  have  just  read  yours  of  the  nineteenth, 
addressed  to  myself  through  the  New  York  Tribune.' 
If  there  be  in  it  any  statements  or  assumptions  of  fact 
which  I  may  know  to  be  erroneous,  I  do  not,  now  and 
here,  controvert  them.  If  there  be  in  it  any  inferences 
which  I  may  believe  to  be  falsely  drawn,  I  do  not,  now 
and  here,  argue  against  them.  If  there  be  perceptible 
in  it  an  impatient  and  dictatorial  tone,  I  waive  it  in 
deference  to  an  old  friend  whose  heart  I  have  always 
supposed  to  be  right. 

"As  to  the  policy  I  'seem  to  be  pursuing,'  as  you  say, 
I  have  not  meant  to  leave  any  one  in  doubt. 

"I  would  save  the  Union.  I  would  save  it  the  short 
est  way  under  the  Constitution.  The  sooner  the  na 
tional  authority  can  be  restored,  the  nearer  the  Union 
will  be  'the  Union  as  it  was.'  If  there  be  those  who 
would  not  save  the  Union  unless  they  could  at  the  same 
time  save  slavery,  I  do  not  agree  with  them.  If  there 
be  those  who  would  not  save  the  Union  unless  they 
could,  at  the  same  time,  destroy  slavery,  I  do  not  agree 
with  them.  My  paramount  object  in  this  struggle  is 
to  save  the  Union,  and  is  not  either  to  save  or  to  de 
stroy  slavery.  If  I  could  save  the  Union  without 
freeing  any  slave,  I  would  do  it ;  and  if  I  could  save  it 
by  freeing  all  the  slaves,  I  would  do  it;  and  if  I  could 
save  it  by  freeing  some  and  leaving  others  alone,  I 
would  also  do  that.  What  I  do  about  slavery  and  the 
colored  race,  I  do  because  I  believe  it  helps  to  save 
the  Union ;  and  what  I  forbear,  I  forbear  because  I 
do  not  believe  it  would  help  to  save  the  Union.  I 
shall  do  less  whenever  I  shall  believe  what  I  am  doing 
hurts  the  cause,  and  I  shall  do  more  whenever  I  shall 


LINCOLN'S  ANSWER  337 

believe  doing  more  will  help  the  cause.  I  shall  try  to 
correct  errors  when  shown  to  be  errors,  and  I  shall 
adopt  new  views  so  fast  as  they  shall  appear  to  be  true 
views. 

"I  have  here  stated  my  purpose  according  to  my  view 
of  official  duty;  and  I  intend  no  modification  of  my 
oft-expressed  personal  wish  that  all  men  everywhere 
could  be  free. 

"Yours, 

"A.  LINCOLN." 

It  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  President  Lincoln, 
when  he  wrote  this  letter,  intended  that  it  should  have 
a  twofold  effect  upon  public  opinion:  first,  that  it 
should  curb  extreme  antislavery  sentiment  to  greater 
patience;  secondly,  that  it  should  rouse  dogged  pro- 
slavery  conservatism,  and  prepare  it  for  the  announce 
ment  which  he  had  resolved  to  make  at  the  first  fitting 
opportunity.  At  the  date  of  the  letter,  he  very  well 
knew  that  a  serious  conflict  of  arms  was  soon  likely 
to  occur  in  Virginia ;  and  he  had  strong  reason  to  hope 
that  the  junction  of  the  armies  of  McClellan  and  Pope 
which  had  been  ordered,  and  was  then  in  progress, 
could  be  successfully  effected,  and  would  result  in  a 
decisive  Union  victory.  This  hope,  however,  was 
sadly  disappointed.  The  second  battle  of  Bull  Run, 
which  occurred  one  week  after  the  Greeley  letter, 
proved  a  serious  defeat,  and  necessitated  a  further  post 
ponement  of  his  contemplated  action. 

As  a  secondary  effect  of  the  new  disaster,  there  came 
upon  him  once  more  an  increased  pressure  to  make 
reprisal  upon  what  was  assumed  to  be  the  really  vul 
nerable  side  of  the  rebellion.  On  September  13,  he  was 
visited  by  an  influential  deputation  from  the  religious 
denominations  of  Chicago,  urging  him  to  issue  at  once 

22 


338  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

a  proclamation  of  universal  emancipation.  His  reply 
to  them,  made  in  the  language  of  the  most  perfect  cour 
tesy,  nevertheless  has  in  it  a  tone  of  rebuke  that  in 
dicates  the  state  of  irritation  and  high  sensitiveness 
under  which  he  was  living  from  day  to  day.  In  the 
actual  condition  of  things,  he  could  neither  safely  sat 
isfy  them  nor  deny  them.  As  any  answer  he  could 
make  would  be  liable  to  misconstruction,  he  devoted  the 
larger  part  of  it  to  pointing  out  the  unreasonableness 
of  their  dogmatic  insistence : 

"I  am  approached  with  the  most  opposite  opinions 
and  advice,  and  that  by  religious  men,  who  are  equally 
certain  that  they  represent  the  divine  will.  I  am  sure 
that  either  the  one  or  the  other  class  is  mistaken  in  that 
belief,  and  perhaps,  in  some  respects,  both.  I  hope  it 
will  not  be  irreverent  for  me  to  say  that  if  it  is  probable 
that  God  would  reveal  his  will  to  others,  on  a  point 
so  connected  with  my  duty,  it  might  be  supposed  he 
would  reveal  it  directly  to  me.  .  .  .  What  good 
would  a  proclamation  of  emancipation  from  me  do, 
especially  as  we  are  now  situated?  I  do  not  want  to 
issue  a  document  that  the  whole  world  will  see  must 
necessarily  be  inoperative,  like  the  Pope's  bull  against 
the  comet.  .  .  .  Understand,  I  raise  no  objections 
against  it  on  legal  or  constitutional  grounds,  for,  as 
commander-in-chief  of  the  army  and  navy  in  time  of 
war,  I  suppose  I  have  a  right  to  take  any  measure 
which  may  best  subdue  the  enemy;  nor  do  I  urge  ob 
jections  of  a  moral  nature,  in  view  of  possible  conse 
quences  of  insurrection  and  massacre  at  the  South.  I 
view  this  matter  as  a  practical  war  measure,  to  be  de 
cided  on  according  to  the  advantages  or  disadvantages 
it  may  offer  to  the  suppression  of  the  rebellion.  .  .  . 
Do  not  misunderstand  me  because  I  have  mentioned 
these  objections.  They  indicate  the  difficulties  that 
have  thus  far  prevented  my  action  in  some  such  way 


SEPTEMBER  PROCLAMATION        339 

as  you  desire.  I  have  not  decided  against  a  proclama 
tion  of  liberty  to  the  slaves,  but  hold  the  matter  under 
advisement.  And  I  can  assure  you  that  the  subject 
is  on  my  mind,  by  day  and  night,  more  than  any  other. 
Whatever  shall  appear  to  be  God's  will,  I  will  do." 

Four  days  after  this  interview  the  battle  of  Antie- 
tam  was  fought,  and  when,  after  a  few  days  of  uncer 
tainty,  it  was  ascertained  that  it  could  be  reasonably 
claimed  as  a  Union  victory,  the  President  resolved  to 
carry  out  his  long-matured  purpose.  The  diary  of 
Secretary  Chase  has  recorded  a  very  full  report  of  the 
interesting  transaction.  On  this  ever  memorable  Sep 
tember  22,  1862,  after  some  playful  preliminary  talk, 
Mr.  Lincoln  said  to  his  cabinet : 

"GENTLEMEN  :  I  have,  as  you  are  aware,  thought 
a  great  deal  about  the  relation  of  this  war  to  slavery; 
and  you  all  remember  that,  several  weeks  ago,  I  read 
to  you  an  order  I  had  prepared  on  this  subject,  which, 
on  account  of  objections  made  by  some  of  you,  was 
not  issued.  Ever  since  then  my  mind  has  been  much 
occupied  with  this  subject,  and  I  have  thought,  all 
along,  that  the  time  for  acting  on  it  might  probably 
come.  I  think  the  time  has  come  now.  I  wish  it  was  a 
better  time.  I  wish  that  we  were  in  a  better  condition. 
The  action  of  the  army  against  the  rebels  has  not  been 
quite  what  I  should  have  best  liked.  But  they  have 
been  driven  out  of  Maryland,  and  Pennsylvania  is  no 
longer  in  danger  of  invasion.  When  the  rebel  army 
was  at  Frederick,  I  determined,  as  soon  as  it  should 
be  driven  out  of  Maryland,  to  issue  a  proclamation  of 
emancipation,  such  as  I  thought  most  likely  to  be  use 
ful.  I  said  nothing  to  any  one,  but  I  made  the  promise 
to  myself  and  [hesitating  a  little]  to  my  Maker.  The 
rebel  army  is  now  driven  out,  and  I  am  going  to  fulfil 
that  promise.  I  have  got  you  together  to  hear  what  I 
have  written  down.  I  do  not  wish  your  advice  about 


340  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

the  main  matter,  for  that  I  have  determined  for  my 
self.  This  I  say  without  intending  anything  but  respect 
for  any  one  of  you.  But  I  already  know  the  views  of 
each  on  this  question.  They  have  been  heretofore  ex 
pressed,  and  I  have  considered  them  as  thoroughly  and 
carefully  as  I  can.  What  I  have  written  is  that  which 
my  reflections  have  determined  me  to  say.  If  there  is 
anything  in  the  expressions  I  use,  or  in  any  minor  mat 
ter,  which  any  one  of  you  thinks  had  best  be  changed, 
I  shall  be  glad  to  receive  the  suggestions.  One  other 
observation  I  will  make.  I  know  very  well  that  many 
others  might,  in  this  matter  as  in  others,  do  better  than 
I  can;  and  if  I  was  satisfied  that  the  public  confidence 
was  more  fully  possessed  by  any  one  of  them  than  by 
me,  and  knew  of  any  constitutional  way  in  which  he 
could  be  put  in  my  place,  he  should  have  it.  I  would 
gladly  yield  it  to  him.  But,  though  I  believe  that  I  have 
not  so  much  of  the  confidence  of  the  people  as  I  had 
some  time  since,  I  do  not  know  that,  all  things  consid 
ered,  any  other  person  has  more ;  and,  however  this  may 
be,  there  is  no  way  in  which  I  can  have  any  other  man 
put  where  I  am.  I  am  here;  I  must  do  the  best  I  can, 
and  bear  the  responsibility  of  taking  the  course  which  I 
feel  I  ought  to  take." 

The  members  of  the  cabinet  all  approved  the  policy 
of  the  measure;  Mr.  Blair  only  objecting  that  he 
thought  the  time  inopportune,  while  others  suggested 
some  slight  amendments.  In  the  new  form  in  which 
it  was  printed  on  the  following  morning,  the  docu 
ment  announced  a  renewal  of  the  plan  of  compensated 
abolishment,  a  continuance  of  the  effort  at  voluntary 
colonization,  a  promise  to  recommend  ultimate  com 
pensation  to  loyal  owners,  and — 

"That  on  the  first  day  of  January,  in  the  year  of  our 
Lord  one  thousand  eight  hundred  and  sixty-three,  all 


SEPTEMBER  PROCLAMATION         341 

persons  held  as  slaves  within  any  State,  or  designated 
part  of  a  State,  the  people  whereof  shall  then  be  in  re 
bellion  against  the  United  States,  shall  be  then,  thence 
forward,  and  forever  free;  and  the  executive  govern 
ment  of  the  United  States,  including  the  military  and 
naval  authorities  thereof,  will  recognize  and  maintain 
the  freedom  of  such  persons,  and  will  do  no  act  or  acts 
to  repress  such  persons,  or  any  of  them,  in  any  efforts 
they  may  make  for  their  actual  freedom." 

Pursuant  to  these  announcements,  the  President's 
annual  message  of  December  i,  1862,  recommended 
to  Congress  the  passage  of  a  joint  resolution  proposing 
to  the  legislatures  of  the  several  States  a  constitutional 
amendment  consisting  of  three  articles,  namely :  One 
providing  compensation  in  bonds  for  every  State  which 
should  abolish  slavery  before  the  year  1900;  another 
securing  freedom  to  all  slaves  who,  during  the  rebel 
lion,  had  enjoyed  actual  freedom  by  the  chances  of  war 
— also  providing  compensation  to  legal  owners;  the 
third  authorizing  Congress  to  provide  for  colonization. 
The  long  and  practical  argument  in  which  he  renewed 
this  plan,  "not  in  exclusion  of,  but  additional  to,  all 
others  for  restoring  and  preserving  the  national  au 
thority  throughout  the  Union,"  concluded  with  the  fol 
lowing  eloquent  sentences : 

"We  can  succeed  only  by  concert.  It  is  not,  'Can 
any  of  us  imagine  better?'  but,  'Can  we  all  do  better?' 
Object  whatsoever  is  possible,  still  the  question  recurs, 
'Can  we  do  better  ?'  The  dogmas  of  the  quiet  past  are 
inadequate  to  the  stormy  present.  The  occasion  is 
piled  high  with  difficulty,  and  we  must  rise  with  the 
occasion.  As  our  case  is  new,  so  we  must  think  anew 
and  act  anew.  We  must  disenthrall  ourselves,  and  then 
we  shall  save  our  country. 

"Fellow-citizens,  we  cannot  escape  history.     We,  of 


342  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

this  Congress  and  this  administration,  will  be  remem 
bered  in  spite  of  ourselves.  No  personal  significance, 
or  insignificance,  can  spare  one  or  another  of  us.  The 
fiery  trial  through  which  we  pass  will  light  us  down, 
in  honor  or  dishonor,  to  the  latest  generation.  We 
say  we  are  for  the  Union.  The  world  will  not  forget 
that  we  say  this.  We  know  how  to  save  the  Union. 
The  world  knows  we  do  know  how  to  save  it.  We — 
even  we  here — hold  the  power  and  bear  the  re 
sponsibility.  In  giving  freedom  to  the  slave,  we  assure 
freedom  to  the  free — honorable  alike  in  what  we  give 
and  what  we  preserve.  We  shall  nobly  save,  or  meanly 
lose,  the  last,  best  hope  of  earth.  Other  means  may 
succeed,  this  could  not  fail.  The  way  is  plain,  peace 
ful,  generous,  just — a  way  which,  if  followed,  the 
world  will  forever  applaud,  and  God  must  forever 
bless." 

But  Mr.  Lincoln  was  not  encouraged  by  any  re 
sponse  to  this  earnest  appeal,  either  from  Congress  or 
by  manifestations  of  public  opinion.  Indeed,  it  may  be 
fairly  presumed  that  he  expected  none.  Perhaps  he 
considered  it  already  a  sufficient  gain  that  it  was  si 
lently  accepted  as  another  admonition  of  the  conse 
quences  which  not  he  nor  his  administration,  but  the 
Civil  War,  with  its  relentless  agencies,  was  rapidly 
bringing  about.  He  was  becoming  more  and  more 
conscious  of  the  silent  influence  of  his  official  utterances 
on  public  sentiment,  if  not  to  convert  obstinate  opposi 
tion,  at  least  to  reconcile  it  to  patient  submission. 

In  that  faith  he  steadfastly  went  on  carrying  out  his 
well-matured  plan,  the  next  important  step  of  which 
was  the  fulfilment  of  the  announcements  made  in  the 
preliminary  emancipation  proclamation  of  September 
22.  On  December  30,  he  presented  to  each  member 
of  his  cabinet  a  copy  of  the  draft  he  had  carefully  made 


EDICT  OF  FREEDOM  343 

of  the  new  and  final  proclamation  to  be  issued  on  New 
Year's  day.  It  will  be  remembered  that  as  early  as  July 
22,  he  informed  the  cabinet  that  the  main  question  in 
volved  he  had  decided  for  himself.  Now,  as  twice  be 
fore,  it  was  only  upon  minor  points  that  he  asked  their 
advice  and  suggestion,  for  which  object  he  placed 
these  drafts  in  their  hands  for  verbal  and  collateral 
criticism. 

In  addition  to  the  central  point  of  military  emanci 
pation  in  all  the  States  yet  in  rebellion,  the  President's 
draft  for  the  first  time  announced  his  intention  to  in 
corporate  a  portion  of  the  newly  liberated  slaves  into 
the  armies  of  the  Union.  This  policy  had  also  been 
under  discussion  at  the  first  consideration  of  the  subject 
in  July.  Mr.  Lincoln  had  then  already  seriously  con 
sidered  it,  but  thought  it  inexpedient  and  productive  of 
more  evil  than  good  at  that  date.  In  his  judgment, 
the  time  had  now  arrived  for  energetically  adopting  it. 

On  the  following  day,  December  31,  the  members 
brought  back  to  the  cabinet  meeting  their  several  crit 
icisms  and  suggestions  on  the  draft  he  had  given  them. 
Perhaps  the  most  important  one  was  that  earnestly 
pressed  by  Secretary  Chase,  that  the  new  proclamation 
should  make  no  exceptions  of  fractional  parts  of  States 
controlled  by  the  Union  armies,  as  in  Louisiana  and 
Virginia,  save  the  forty-eight  counties  of  the  latter 
designated  as  West  Virginia,  then  in  process  of  forma 
tion  and  admission  as  a  new  State ;  the  constitutionality 
of  which,  on  this  same  December  31,  was  elaborately 
discussed  in  writing  by  the  members  of  the  cabinet,  and 
affirmatively  decided  by  the  President. 

On  the  afternoon  of  December  31,  the  cabinet  meet 
ing  being  over,  Mr.  Lincoln  once  more  carefully  re 
wrote  the  proclamation,  embodying  in  it  the  sug 
gestions  which  had  been  made  as  to  mere  verbal 


344 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 


improvements ;  but  he  rigidly  adhered  to  his  own  draft 
in  retaining  the  exceptions  as  to  fractional  parts  of 
States  and  the  forty-eight  counties  of  West  Virginia ; 
and  also  his  announcement  of  intention  to  enlist  the 
freedmen  in  military  service.  Secretary  Chase  had 
submitted  the  form  of  a  closing  paragraph.  This  the 
President  also  adopted,  but  added  to  it,  after  the  words 
"warranted  by  the  Constitution,"  his  own  important 
qualifying  correction,  "upon  military  necessity." 

The  full  text  of  the  weighty  document  will  be  found 
in  a  foot-note.1     It  recited  the  announcement  of  the 


1  BY  THE  PRESIDENT  OF  THE 

UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA: 

A  PROCLAMATION. 

Whereas  on  the  twenty-second 
day  of  September,  in  the  year  of 
our  Lord  one  thousand  eight  hun 
dred  and  sixty-two,  a  proclamation 
was  issued  by  the  President  of  the 
United  States,  containing,  among 
other  things,  the  following,  to  wit: 

"That  on  the  first  day  of  Janu 
ary,  in  the  year  of  our  Lord  one 
thousand  eight  hundred  and  sixty- 
three,  all  persons  held  as  slaves 
within  any  State,  or  designated  part 
of  a  State,  the  people  whereof  shall 
then  be  in  rebellion  against  the 
United  States,  shall  be  then,  thence 
forward  and  forever  free ;  and  the 
executive  government  of  the  United 
States,  including  the  military  and 
naval  authority  thereof,  will  recog 
nize  and  maintain  the  freedom  of 
such  persons,  and  will  do  no  act  or 
acts  to  repress  such  persons,  or  any 
of  them,  in  any  efforts  they  may 
make  for  their  actual  freedom. 

"That  the  Executive  will,  on  the 
first  day  of  January  aforesaid,  by 
proclamation,  designate  the  States 
and  parts  of  States,  if  any,  in  which 
the  people  thereof  respectively 
shall  then  be  in  rebellion  against 
the  United  States  ;  and  the  fact  that 


any  State,  or  the  people  thereof, 
shall  on  that  day  be  in  good  faith 
represented  in  the  Congress  of  the 
United  States  by  members  chosen 
thereto  at  elections  wherein  a  ma 
jority  of  the  qualified  voters  of  such 
State  shall  have  participated,  shall, 
in  the  absence  of  strong  counter 
vailing  testimony,  be  deemed  con 
clusive  evidence  that  such  State  and 
the  people  thereof  are  not  then  in 
rebellion  against  the  United 
States." 

Now,  therefore,  I,  Abraham 
Lincoln,  President  of  the  United 
States,  by  virtue  of  the  power  in 
me  vested  as  commander-in-chief 
of  the  army  and  navy  of  the  United 
States,  in  time  of  actual  armed  re 
bellion  against  the  authority  and 
government  of  the  United  States, 
and  as  a  fit  and  necessary  war  mea 
sure  for  suppressing  said  rebellion, 
do,  on  this  first  day  of  January,  in 
the  year  of  our  Lord  one  thousand 
eight  hundred  and  sixty-three,  and 
in  accordance  with  my  purpose  so 
to  do,  publicly  proclaimed  for  the 
full  period  of  one  hundred  days 
from  the  day  first  above  mentioned, 
order  and  designate  as  the  States 
and  parts  of  States  wherein  the  peo 
ple  thereof,  respectively,  are  this 
day  in  rebellion  against  the  United 
States,  the  following,  to  wit : 


EDICT  OF  FREEDOM 


345 


September  proclamation;  defined  its  character  and  au- 
thorky  as  a  military  decree;  designated  the  States  and 
parts  of  States  that  day  in  rebellion  against  the  gov 
ernment;  ordered  and  declared  that  all  persons  held 
as  slaves  therein  "are  and  henceforward  shall  be  free" ; 
and  that  such  persons  of  suitable  condition  would  be 
received  into  the  military  service.  "And  upon  this  act, 
sincerely  believed  to  be  an  act  of  justice,  warranted 
by  the  Constitution  upon  military  necessity,  I  invoke 
the  considerate  judgment  of  mankind,  and  the  gracious 
favor  of  Almighty  God." 

The  conclusion  of  the  momentous  transaction  was 


Arkansas,  Texas,  Louisiana  (ex 
cept  the  parishes  of  St.  Bernard, 
Plaquemines,  Jefferson,  St.  John, 
St.  Charles,  St.  James,  Ascension, 
Assumption,  Terre  Bonne,  La- 
fourche,  St.  Mary,  St.  Martin,  and 
Orleans,  including  the  city  of  New 
Orleans),  Mississippi,  Alabama, 
Florida,  Georgia,  South  Carolina, 
North  Carolina,  and  Virginia  (ex 
cept  the  forty-eight  counties  desig 
nated  as  West  Virginia,  and  also 
the  counties  of  Berkeley,  Accomac, 
Northampton,  Elizabeth  City, 
York,  Princess  Anne,  and  Norfolk, 
including  the  cities  of  Norfolk  and 
Portsmouth),  and  which  excepted 
parts  are  for  the  present  left  pre 
cisely  as  if  this  proclamation  were 
not  issued. 

And  by  virtue  of  the  power  and 
for  the  purpose  aforesaid,  I  do  or- 
der  and  declare  that  all  persons  held 
as  slaves  within  said  designated 
States  and  parts  of  States  are,  and 
henceforward  shall  be,  free ;  and 
that  the  executive  government  of 
the  United  States,  including  the 
military  and  naval  authorities  there 
of,  will  recognize  and  maintain  the 
freedom  of  said  persons. 

And  I  hereby  enjoin  upon  the 
people  so  declared  to  be  free  to  ab 
stain  from  all  violence,  unless  in 


necessary  self-defense ;  and  I  rec 
ommend  to  them  that,  in  all  cases 
when  allowed,  they  labor  faithfully 
for  reasonable  wages. 

And  I  further  declare  and  make 
known  that  such  persons  of  suitable 
condition  will  be  received  into  the 
armed  service  of  the  United  States 
to  garrison  forts,  positions,  sta 
tions,  and  other  places,  and  to  man 
vessels  of  all  sorts  in  said  service. 
And  upon  this  act,  sincerely  be 
lieved  to  be  an  act  of  justice,  war 
ranted  by  the  Constitution  upon 
military  necessity,  I  invoke  the 
considerate  judgment  of  mankind 
and  the  gracious  favor  of  Almighty 
God. 

In  witness  whereof,  I  have  here 
unto  set  my  hand,  and  caused  the 
seal  of  the  United  States  to  be 
affixed. 

Done  at  the  city  of  Wash 
ington,  this  first  day  of  Jan 
uary,  in  the  year  of  our  Lord 
one  thousand  eight  hundred 
and  sixty-three,  and  of  the 
independence  of  the  United 
States  of  America  the  eighty- 
seventh. 

ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
BY  THE  PRESIDENT  : 

WILLIAM  H.  SEWARD, 

Secretary  of  State. 


L.  S. 


346  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

as  deliberate  and  simple  as  had  been  its  various 
stages  of  preparation.  The  morning  and  midday  of 
January  i,  1863,  were  occupied  by  the  half-social,  half- 
official  ceremonial  of  the  usual  New  Year's  day  recep 
tion  at  the  Executive  Mansion,  established  by  long  cus 
tom.  At  about  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  after 
full  three  hours  of  greetings  and  handshakings,  Mr. 
Lincoln  and  perhaps  a  dozen  persons  assembled  in  the 
executive  office,  and,  without  any  prearranged  cere 
mony,  the  President  affixed  his  signature  to  the  great 
Edict  of  Freedom.  No  better  commentary  will  ever 
be  written  upon  this  far-reaching  act  than  that  which 
he  himself  embodied  in  a  letter  written  to  a  friend  a 
little  more  than  a  year  later : 

"I  am  naturally  antislavery.  If  slavery  is  not  wrong, 
nothing  is  wrong.  I  cannot  remember  when  I  did  not 
so  think  and  feel,  and  yet  I  have  never  understood  that 
the  Presidency  conferred  upon  me  an  unrestricted  right 
to  act  officially  upon  this  judgment  and  feeling.  It  was 
in  the  oath  I  took  that  I  would,  to  the  best  of  my 
ability,  preserve,  protect,  and  defend  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States.  I  could  not  take  the  office  with 
out  taking  the  oath.  Nor  was  it  my  view  that  I  might 
take  an  oath  to  get  power,  and  break  the  oath  in  using 
the  power.  I  understood,  too,  that  in  ordinary  civil 
administration  this  oath  even  forbade  me  to  practi 
cally  indulge  my  primary  abstract  judgment  on  the 
moral  question  of  slavery.  I  had  publicly  declared 
this  many  times,  and  in  many  ways.  And  I  aver  that, 
to  this  day,  I  have  done  no  official  act  in  mere  defer 
ence  to  my  abstract  judgment  and  feeling  on  slavery. 
I  did  understand,  however,  that  my  oath  to  preserve 
the  Constitution  to  the  best  of  my  ability  imposed  upon 
me  the  duty  of  preserving,  by  every  indispensable 
means,  that  government,  that  nation,  of  which  that 


LETTER  TO  HODGES  347 

Constitution  was  the  organic  law.  Was  it  possible  to 
lose  the  nation  and  yet  preserve  the  Constitution?  By 
general  law,  life  and  limb  must  be  protected,  yet  often 
a  limb  must  be  amputated  to  save  a  life;  but  a  life  is 
never  wisely  given  to  save  a  limb.  I  felt  that  measures 
otherwise  unconstitutional  might  become  lawful  by  be 
coming  indispensable  to  the  preservation  of  the  Con 
stitution,  through  the  preservation  of  the  nation.  Right 
or  wrong,  I  assumed  this  ground,  and  now  avow  it. 
I  could  not  feel  that,  to  the  best  of  my  ability,  I  had 
even  tried  to  preserve  the  Constitution  if,  to  save 
slavery  or  any  minor  matter,  I  should  permit  the 
wreck  of  government,  country,  and  Constitution  all 
together.  When,  early  in  the  war,  General  Fremont 
attempted  military  emancipation,  I  forbade  it,  because 
I  did  not  then  think  it  an  indispensable  necessity. 
When,  a  little  later,  General  Cameron,  then  Secretary 
of  War,  suggested  the  arming  of  the  blacks,  I  objected 
because  I  did  not  yet  think  it  an  indispensable  necessity. 
When,  still  later,  General  Hunter  attempted  military 
emancipation,  I  again  forbade  it,  because  I  did  not  yet 
think  the  indispensable  necessity  had  come.  When  in 
March  and  May  and  July,  1862,  I  made  earnest  and 
successive  appeals  to  the  border  States  to  favor  com 
pensated  emancipation,  I  believed  the  indispensable  ne 
cessity  for  military  emancipation  and  arming  the  blacks 
would  come  unless  averted  by  that  measure.  They  de 
clined  the  proposition,  and  I  was,  in  my  best  judgment, 
driven  to  the  alternative  of  either  surrendering  the 
Union,  and  with  it  the  Constitution,  or  of  laying  strong 
hand  upon  the  colored  element.  I  chose  the  latter." 


XXV 

Negro  Soldiers — Fort  Pillow — Retaliation — Draft — 
Northern  Democrats — Governor  Seymours  Attitude — 
Draft  Riots  in  New  York — Vallandigham — Lincoln  on 
his  Authority  to  Suspend  Writ  of  Habeas  Corpus — 
Knights  of  the  Golden  Circle — Jacob  Thompson  in 
Canada 

ON  the  subject  of  negro  soldiers,  as  on  many  other 
topics,  the  period  of  active  rebellion  and  civil 
war  had  wrought  a  profound  change  in  public  opinion. 
From  the  foundation  of  the  government  to  the  Re 
bellion,  the  horrible  nightmare  of  a  possible  slave  in 
surrection  had  brooded  over  the  entire  South.  This 
feeling  naturally  had  a  sympathetic  reflection  in  the 
North,  and  at  first  produced  an  instinctive  shrinking 
from  any  thought  of  placing  arms  in  the  hands  of  the 
blacks  whom  the  chances  of  war  had  given  practical 
or  legal  freedom.  During  the  year  1862,  a  few  spo 
radic  efforts  were  made  by  zealous  individuals,  under 
apparently  favoring  conditions,  to  begin  the  formation 
of  colored  regiments.  The  eccentric  Senator  Lane 
tried  it  in  Kansas,  or,  rather,  along  the  Missouri  bor 
der,  without  success.  General  Hunter  made  an  experi 
ment  in  South  Carolina,  but  found  the  freedmen  too 
unwilling  to  enlist,  and  the  white  officers  too  prejudiced 
to  instruct  them.  General  Butler,  at  New  Orleans,  in 
fused  his  wonted  energy  into  a  similar  attempt,  with 
somewhat  better  results.  He  found  that  before  the 
capture  of  the  city,  Governor  Moore  of  Louisiana  had 

348 


NEGRO   SOLDIERS  349 

begun  the  organization  of  a  regiment  of  free  colored 
men  for  local  defense.  Butler  resuscitated  this  organ 
ization,  for  which  he  thus  had  the  advantage  of  Con 
federate  example  and  precedent,  and  against  which 
the  accusation  of  arming  slaves  could  not  be  urged. 
Early  in  September,  Butler  reported,  with  his  usual 
biting  -sarcasm : 

"I  shall  also  have  within  ten  days  a  regiment,  one 
thousand  strong,  of  native  guards  (colored),  the  dark 
est  of  whom  will  be  about  the  complexion  of  the  late 
Mr.  Webster." 

All  these  efforts  \vere  made  under  implied,  rather 
than  expressed  provisions  of  law,  and  encountered 
more  or  less  embarrassment  in  obtaining  pay  and  sup 
plies,  because  they  were  not  distinctly  recognized  in  the 
army  regulations.  This  could  not  well  be  done  so  long 
as  the  President  considered  the  policy  premature.  His 
spirit  of  caution  in  this  regard  was  set  forth  by  the 
Secretary  of  War  in  a  letter  of  instruction  dated  July 
3,  1862: 

"He  is  of  opinion,"  wrote  Mr.  Stanton,  "that  under 
the  laws  of  Congress,  they  [the  former  slaves]  cannot 
be  sent  back  to  their  masters;  that  in  common  human 
ity  they  must  not  be  permitted  to  suffer  for  want  of 
food,  shelter,  or  other  necessaries  of  life;  that  to  this 
end  they  should  be  provided  for  by  the  quartermaster's 
and  commissary's  departments,  and  that  those  who 
are  capable  of  labor  should  be  set  to  work  and  paid 
reasonable  wages.  In  directing  this  to  be  done,  the 
President  does  not  mean,  at  present,  to  settle  any  gen 
eral  rule  in  respect  to  slaves  or  slavery,  but  simply  to 
provide  for  the  particular  case  under  the  circumstances 
in  which  it  is  now  presented." 

All  this  was  changed  by  the  final  proclamation  of 
emancipation,  which  authoritatively  announced  that 


350  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

persons  of  suitable  condition,  whom  it  declared  free, 
would  be  received  into  the  armed  service  of  the  United 
States.  During  the  next  few  months,  the  President 
wrote  several  personal  letters  to  General  Dix,  com 
manding  at  Fortress  Monroe ;  to  Andrew  Johnson,  mil 
itary  governor  of  Tennessee;  to  General  Banks,  com 
manding  at  New  Orleans;  and  to  General  Hunter,  in 
the  Department  of  the  South,  urging  their  attention 
to  promoting  the  new  policy;  and,  what  was  yet  more 
to  the  purpose,  a  bureau  was  created  in  the  War  De 
partment  having  special  charge  of  the  duty,  and  the 
adjutant-general  of  the  army  was  personally  sent  to 
the  Union  camps  on  the  Mississippi  River  to  superin 
tend  the  recruitment  and  enlistment  of  the  negroes, 
where,  with  the  hearty  cooperation  of  General  Grant 
and  other  Union  commanders,  he  met  most  encourag 
ing  and  gratifying  success. 

The  Confederate  authorities  made  a  great  outcry 
over  the  new  departure.  They  could  not  fail  to  see 
the  immense  effect  it  was  destined  to  have  in  the  severe 
military  struggle,  and  their  prejudice  of  generations 
greatly  intensified  the  gloomy  apprehensions  they  no 
doubt  honestly  felt.  Yet  even  allowing  for  this,  the 
exaggerated  language  in  which  they  described  it  be 
came  absolutely  ludicrous.  The  Confederate  War 
Department  early  declared  Generals  Hunter  and  Phelps 
to  be  outlaws,  because  they  were  drilling  and  organiz 
ing  slaves;  and  the  sensational  proclamation  issued 
by  Jefferson  Davis  on  December  23,  1862,  ordered 
that  Butler  and  his  commissioned  officers,  "robbers  and 
criminals  deserving  death,  ...  be,  whenever 
captured,  reserved  for  execution." 

Mr.  Lincoln's  final  emancipation  proclamation  ex 
cited  them  to  a  still  higher  frenzy.  The  Confederate 
Senate  talked  of  raising  the  black  flag;  Jefferson 
Davis's  message  stigmatized  it  as  "the  most  execrable 


FORT  PILLOW  35i 

measure  recorded  in  the  history  of  guilty  man" ;  and 
a  joint  resolution  of  the  Confederate  Congress  pre 
scribed  that  white  officers  of  negro  Union  soldiers 
"shall,  if  captured,  be  put  to  death,  or  be  otherwise 
punished  at  the  discretion  of  the  court."  The  gen 
eral  orders  of  some  subordinate  Confederate  com 
manders  repeated  or  rivaled  such  denunciations  and 
threats. 

Fortunately,  the  records  of  the  war  are  not  stained 
with  either  excesses  by  the  colored  troops  or  even  a 
single  instance  of  such  proclaimed  barbarity  upon  white 
Union  officers;  and  the  visitation  of  vengeance  upon 
negro  soldiers  is  confined,  so  far  as  known,  to  the  sin 
gle  instance  of  the  massacre  at  Fort  Pillow.  In  that 
deplorable  affair,  the  Confederate  commander  reported, 
by  telegraph,  that  in  thirty  minutes  he  stormed  a  fort 
manned  by  seven  hundred,  and  captured  the  entire  gar 
rison,  killing  five  hundred  and  taking  one  hundred  pris 
oners,  while  he  sustained  a  loss  of  only  twenty  killed 
and  sixty  wounded.  It  is  unnecessary  to  explain  that 
the  bulk  of  the  slain  were  colored  soldiers.  Making 
due  allowance  for  the  heat  of  battle,  history  can  con 
siderately  veil  closer  scrutiny  into  the  realities  wrapped 
in  the  exaggerated  boast  of  such  a  victory. 

The  Fort  Pillow  incident,  which  occurred  in  the 
spring  of  1864,  brought  upon  President  Lincoln  the 
very  serious  question  of  enforcing  an  order  of  retalia 
tion  which  had  been  issued  on  July  30,  1863,  as  an  an 
swer  to  the  Confederate  joint  resolution  of  May  i.  Mr. 
Lincoln's  freedom  from  every  trace  of  passion  was 
as  conspicuous  in  this  as  in  all  his  official  acts.  In  a 
little  address  at  Baltimore,  while  referring  to  the  rumor 
of  the  massacre  which  had  just  been  received,  Mr. 
Lincoln  said : 

"We  do  not  to-day  know  that  a  colored  soldier,  or 
white  officer  commanding  colored  soldiers,  has  been 


352  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

massacred  by  the  rebels  when  made  a  prisoner.  We 
fear  it,  believe  it,  I  may  say,  but  we  do  not  know  it. 
To  take  the  life  of  one  of  their  prisoners  on  the  assump 
tion  that  they  murder  ours,  when  it  is  short  of  certainty 
that  they  do  murder  ours,  might  be  too  serious,  too 
cruel,  a  mistake." 

When  more  authentic  information  arrived,  the  mat 
ter  was  very  earnestly  debated  by  the  assembled  cab 
inet;  but  the  discussion  only  served  to  bring  out  in 
stronger  light  the  inherent  dangers  of  either  course. 
In  this  nice  balancing  of  weighty  reasons,  two  influ 
ences  decided  the  course  of  the  government  against 
retaliation.  One  was  that  General  Grant  was  about  to 
begin  his  memorable  campaign  against  Richmond,  and 
that  it  would  be  most  impolitic  to  preface  a  great  battle 
by  the  tragic  spectacle  of  a  military  punishment,  how 
ever  justifiable.  The  second  was  the  tender-hearted 
humanity  of  the  ever  merciful  President.  Frederick 
Douglass  has  related  the  answer  Mr.  Lincoln  made  to 
him  in  a  conversation  nearly  a  year  earlier : 

"I  shall  never  forget  the  benignant  expression  of  liis 
face,  the  tearful  look  of  his  eye,  and  the  quiver  in  his 
voice  when  he  deprecated  a  resort  to  retaliatory  mea 
sures.  'Once  begun,'  said  he,  T  do  not  know  where 
such  a  measure  would  stop.'  He  said  he  could  not  take 
men  out  and  kill  them  in  cold  blood  for  what  was  done 
by  others.  If  he  could  get  hold  of  the  persons  who 
were  guilty  of  killing  the  colored  prisoners  in  cold 
blood,  the  case  would  be  different,  but  he  could  not  kill 
the  innocent  for  the  guilty." 

Amid  the  sanguinary  reports  and  crowding  events 
that  held  public  attention  for  a  year,  from  the  Wil 
derness  to  Appomattox,  the  Fort  Pillow  affair  was  for 
gotten,  not  only  by  the  cabinet,  but  by  the  country. 

The  related  subjects  of  emancipation  and  negro  sol- 


THE  DRAFT  353 

diers  would  doubtless  have  been  discussed  with  much 
more  passion  and  friction,  had  not  public  thought 
been  largely  occupied  during  the  year  1863  by  the  en 
actment  of  the  conscription  law  and  the  enforcement 
of  the  draft.  In  the  hard  stress  of  politics  and  war 
during  the  years  1861  and  1862,  the  popular  enthusi 
asm  with  which  the  free  States  responded  to  the  Presi 
dent's  call  to  put  down  the  rebellion  by  force  of  arms 
had  become  measurably  exhausted.  The  heavy  mil 
itary  reverses  which  attended  the  failure  of  McClellan's 
campaign  against  Richmond,  Pope's  defeat  at  the  sec 
ond  Bull  Run,  McClellan's  neglect  to  follow  up  the 
drawn  battle  of  Antietam  with  energetic  operations,  the 
gradual  change  of  early  Western  victories  to  a  cessa 
tion  of  all  effort  to  open  the  Mississippi,  and  the  scat 
tering  of  the  Western  forces  to  the  spiritless  routine 
of  repairing  and  guarding  long  railroad  lines,  all  oper 
ated  together  practically  to  stop  volunteering  and  en 
listment  by  the  end  of  1862. 

Thus  far,  the  patriotic  record  was  a  glorious  one. 
Almost  one  hundred  thousand  three  months'  militia 
had  shouldered  muskets  to  redress  the  fall  of  Fort  Sum- 
ter;  over  half  a  million  three  years'  volunteers  promptly 
enlisted  to  form  the  first  national  army  under  the  laws 
of  Congress  passed  in  August,  1861 ;  nearly  half  a 
million  more  volunteers  came  forward  under  the  tender 
of  the  governors  of  free  States  and  the  President's 
call  of  July,  1862,  to  repair  the  failure  of  McClellan's 
Peninsula  campaign.  Several  minor  calls  for  shorter 
terms  of  enlistment,  aggregating  more  than  forty 
thousand,  are  here  omitted  for  brevity's  sake.  Had  the 
Western  victories  continued,  had  the  Mississippi  been 
opened,  had  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  been  more  fortu 
nate,  volunteering  would  doubtless  have  continued  at 
quite  or  nearly  the  same  rate.  But  with  success  de- 

23 


354  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

layed,  with  campaigns  thwarted,  with  public  sentiment 
despondent,  armies  ceased  to  fill.  An  emergency  call 
for  three  hundred  thousand  nine  months'  men,  issued 
on  August  4,  1862,  produced  a  total  of  only  eighty- 
six  thousand  eight  hundred  and  sixty;  and  an  attempt 
to  supply  these  in  some  of  the  States  by  a  draft  under 
State  laws  demonstrated  that  mere  local  statutes  and 
machinery  for  that  form  of  military  recruitment  were 
defective  and  totally  inadequate. 

With  the  beginning  of  the  third  year  of  the  war, 
more  energetic  measures  to  fill  the  armies  were  seen 
to  be  necessary;  and  after  very  hot  and  acrimonious 
debate  for  about  a  month,  Congress,  on  March  3,  1863, 
passed  a  national  conscription  law,  under  which  all 
male  citizens  between  the  ages  of  twenty  and  forty- 
five  were  enrolled  to  constitute  the  national  forces, 
and  the  President  was  authorized  to  call  them  into  ser 
vice  by  draft  as  occasion  might  require.  The  law  au 
thorized  the  appointment  of  a  provost-marshal-gen 
eral,  and  under  him  a  provost-marshal,  a  commissioner, 
and  a  surgeon,  to  constitute  a  board  of  enrollment  in 
each  congressional  district;  who,  with  necessary  depu 
ties,  were  required  to  carry  out  the  law  by  national 
authority,  under  the  supervision  of  the  provost-mar 
shal-general. 

For  more  than  a  year  past,  the  Democratic  leaders 
in  the  Northern  States  had  assumed  an  attitude  of  vio 
lent  partizanship  against  the  administration,  their  hos 
tility  taking  mainly  the  form  of  stubborn  opposition  to 
the  antislavery  enactments  of  Congress  and  the  eman 
cipation  measures  of  the  President.  They  charged 
with  loud  denunciation  that  he  was  converting  the 
maintenance  of  the  Union  into  a  war  for  abolition,  and 
with  this  and  other  clamors  had  gained  considerable 
successes  in  the  autumn  congressional  elections  of 


THE  DRAFT  355 

1862,  though  not  enough  to  break  the  Republican  ma 
jority  in  the  House  of  Representatives.  General  Mc- 
Clellan  was  a  Democrat,  and,  since  his  removal  from 
command,  they  proclaimed  him  a  martyr  to  this  policy, 
and  were  grooming  him  to  be  their  coming  presiden 
tial  candidate. 

The  passage  of  the  conscription  law  afforded  them  a 
new  pretext  to  assail  the  administration;  and  Demo 
cratic  members  of  both  Houses  of  Congress  denounced 
it  with  extravagant  partizan  bitterness  as  a  violation 
of  the  Constitution,  and  subversive  of  popular  lib 
erty.  In  the  mouths  of  vindictive  cross-roads  dem 
agogues,  and  in  the  columns  of  irresponsible  news 
papers  that  supply  the  political  reading  among  the  more 
reckless  elements  of  city  populations,  the  extravagant 
language  of  Democratic  leaders  degenerated  in  many 
instances  into  unrestrained  abuse  and  accusation.  Yet, 
considering  that  this  was  the  first  conscription  law  ever 
enacted  in  the  United  States,  considering  the  multi 
tude  of  questions  and  difficulties  attending  its  appli 
cation,  considering  that  the  necessity  of  its  enforcement 
was,  in  the  nature  of  things,  unwelcome  to  the  friends 
of  the  government,  and,  as  naturally,  excited  all  the  en 
mity  and  cunning  of  its  foes  to  impede,  thwart,  and 
evade  it,  the  law  was  carried  out  with  a  remarkably 
small  proportion  of  delay,  obstruction,  or  resulting 
violence. 

Among  a  considerable  number  of  individual  viola 
tions  of  the  act,  in  which  prompt  punishment  prevented 
a  repetition,  only  two  prominent  incidents  arose  which 
had  what  may  be  called  a  national  significance.  In 
the  State  of  New  York  the  partial  political  reaction  of 
1862  had  caused  the  election  of  Horatio  Seymour,  a 
Democrat,  as  governor.  A  man  of  high  character  and 
great  ability,  he,  nevertheless,  permitted  his  partizan 


356  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

feeling  to  warp  and  color  his  executive  functions  to  a 
dangerous  extent.  The  spirit  of  his  antagonism  is 
shown  in  a  phrase  of  his  fourth-of-July  oration : 

"The  Democratic  organization  look  upon  this  ad 
ministration  as  hostile  to  their  rights  and  liberties ;  they 
look  upon  their  opponents  as  men  who  would  do  them 
wrong  in  regard  to  their  most  sacred  franchises." 

Believing — perhaps  honestly — the  conscription  law 
to  be  unconstitutional,  he  endeavored,  by  protest,  argu 
ment,  and  administrative  non-compliance,  to  impede 
its  execution  on  the  plea  of  first  demanding  a  Supreme 
Court  decision  as  to  its  legality.  To  this  President 
Lincoln  replied : 

"I  cannot  consent  to  suspend  the  draft  in  New  York, 
as  you  request,  because,  among  other  reasons,  time  is 
too  important.  ...  I  do  not  object  to  abide  a  deci 
sion  of  the  United  States  Supreme  Court,  or  of  the 
judges  thereof,  on  the  constitutionality  of  the  draft 
law.  In  fact,  I  should  be  willing  to  facilitate  the  ob 
taining  of  it ;  but  I  cannot  consent  to  lose  the  time  while 
it  is  being  obtained.  We  are  contending  with  an  en 
emy  who,  as  I  understand,  drives  every  able-bodied 
man  he  can  reach  into  his  ranks,  very  much  as  a 
butcher  drives  bullocks  into  a  slaughter-pen.  No  time 
is  wasted,  no  argument  is  used.  This  produces  an 
army  which  will  soon  turn  upon  our  now  victorious 
soldiers  already  in  the  field,  if  they  shall  not  be  sus 
tained  by  recruits  as  they  should  be." 

Notwithstanding  Governor  Seymour's  neglect  to 
give  the  enrolling  officers  any  cooperation,  preparations 
for  the  draft  went  on  in  New  York  city  without  pros 
pect  of  serious  disturbance,  except  the  incendiary  lan 
guage  of  low  newspapers  and  handbills.  But  scarcely 
had  the  wheel  begun  to  turn,  and  the  drawing  com 
menced,  on  July  13,  when  a  sudden  riot  broke  out. 


DRAFT  RIOTS  357 

First  demolishing  the  enrolling-office,  the  crowd  next 
attacked  an  adjoining  block  of  stores,  which  they  plun 
dered  and  set  on  fire,  refusing  to  let  the  firemen  put 
out  the  flames.  From  this  point  the  excitement  and 
disorder  spread  over  the  city,  which  for  three  days  was 
at  many  points  subjected  to  the  uncontrolled  fury  of 
the  mob.  Loud  threats  to  destroy  the  New  York 
"Tribune"  office,  which  the  inmates  as  vigorously  pre 
pared  to  defend,  were  made.  The  most  savage  bru 
tality  was  wreaked  upon  colored  people.  The  fine 
building  of  the  colored  Orphan  Asylum,  where  several 
hundred  children  barely  found  means  of  escape,  was 
plundered  and  set  on  fire.  It  was  notable  that  for 
eigners  of  recent  importation  were  the  principal  leaders 
and  actors  in  this  lawlessness  in  which  two  million 
dollars  worth  of  property  was  destroyed,  and  several 
hundred  persons  lost  their  lives. 

The  disturbance  came  to  an  end  on  the  night  of  the 
fourth  day,  when  a  small  detachment  of  soldiers  met 
a  body  of  rioters,  and  firing  into  them,  killed  thirteen, 
and  wounded  eighteen  more.  Governor  Seymour  gave 
but  little  help  in  the  disorder,  and  left  a  stain  on  the 
record  of  his  courage  by  addressing  a  portion  of  the 
mob  as  "my  friends."  The  opportune  arrival  of  na 
tional  troops  restored,  and  thereafter  maintained,  quiet 
and  safety. 

Some  temporary  disturbance  occurred  in  Boston,  but 
was  promptly  put  down,  and  loud  appeals  came  from 
Philadelphia  and  Chicago  to  stop  the  draft.  The  final 
effect  of  the  conscription  law  was  not  so  much  to  obtain 
recruits  for  the  service,  as  to  stimulate  local  effort 
throughout  the  country  to  promote  volunteering, 
whereby  the  number  drafted  was  either  greatly  les 
sened  or,  in  many  localities,  entirely  avoided  by  filling 
the  State  quotas. 


358  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

The  military  arrest  of  Clement  L.  Vallandigham,  a 
Democratic  member  of  Congress  from  Ohio,  for  incen 
diary  language  denouncing  the  draft,  also  grew  to  an 
important  incident.  Arrested  and  tried  under  the  or 
ders  of  General  Burnside,  a  military  commission  found 
him  guilty  of  having  violated  General  Order  No.  38,  by 
"declaring  disloyal  sentiments  and  opinions  with  the  ob 
ject  and  purpose  of  weakening  the  power  of  the  govern 
ment  in  its  efforts  to  suppress  an  unlawful  rebellion"; 
and  sentenced  him  to  military  confinement  during  the 
war.  Judge  Leavitt  of  the  United  States  Circuit 
Court  denied  a  writ  of  habeas  corpus  in  the  case. 
President  Lincoln  regretted  the  arrest,  but  felt  it  im 
prudent  to  annul  the  action  of  the  general  and  the  mil 
itary  tribunal.  Conforming  to  a  clause  of  Burnside's 
order,  he  modified  the  sentence  by  sending  Vallandig 
ham  south  beyond  the  Union  military  lines.  The  affair 
created  a  great  sensation,  and,  in  a  spirit  of  party  pro 
test,  the  Ohio  Democrats  unanimously  nominated  Val 
landigham  for  governor.  Vallandigham  went  to  Rich 
mond,  held  a  conference  with  the  Confederate  author 
ities,  and,  by  way  of  Bermuda,  went  to  Canada,  from 
whence  he  issued  a  political  address.  The  Democrats 
of  both  Ohio  and  New  York  took  up  the  political  and 
legal  discussion  with  great  heat,  and  sent  imposing 
committees  to  present  long  addresses  to  the  President 
on  the  affair. 

Mr.  Lincoln  made  long  written  replies  to  both  ad 
dresses,  of  which  only  so  much  needs  quoting  here  as 
concisely  states  his  interpretation  of  his  authority  to 
suspend  the  privilege  of  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus: 

"You  ask,  in  substance,  whether  I  really  claim  that  I 
may  override  all  the  guaranteed  rights  of  individuals, 
on  the  plea  of  conserving  the  public  safety — when  I 
may  choose  to  say  the  public  safety  requires  it.  This 


HABEAS   CORPUS  359 

question,  divested  of  the  phraseology  calculated  to 
represent  me  as  struggling  for  an  arbitrary  personal 
prerogative,  is  either  simply  a  question  who  shall  de 
cide,  or  an  affirmation  that  nobody  shall  decide,  what 
the  public  safety  does  require  in  cases  of  rebellion  or 
invasion.  The  Constitution  contemplates  the  question 
as  likely  to  occur  for  decision,  but  it  does  not  expressly 
declare  who  is  to  decide  it.  By  necessary  implication, 
when  rebellion  or  invasion  comes,  the  decision  is  to  be 
made  from  time  to  time;  and  I  think  the  man  whom, 
for  the  time,  the  people  have,  under  the  Constitution, 
made  the  commander-in-chief  of  their  army  and  navy, 
is  the  man  who  holds  the  power  and  bears  the  respon 
sibility  of  making  it.  If  he  uses  the  power  justly,  the 
same  people  will  probably  justify  him;  if  he  abuses  it, 
he  is  in  their  hands,  to  be  dealt  with  by  all  the  modes 
they  have  reserved  to  themselves  in  the  Constitution." 

Forcible  and  convincing  as  was  this  legal  analysis, 
a  single  sympathetic  phrase  of  the  President's  reply 
had  a  much  greater  popular  effect : 

"Must  I  shoot  a  simple-minded  soldier  boy  who  de 
serts,  while  I  must  not  touch  a  hair  of  a  wily  agitator 
who  induces  him  to  desert?" 

The  term  so  accurately  described  the  character  of 
Vallandigham,  and  the  pointed  query  so  touched  the 
hearts  of  the  Union  people  throughout  the  land  whose 
favorite  "soldier  boys"  had  volunteered  to  fill  the  Union 
armies,  that  it  rendered  powerless  the  crafty  criticism 
of  party  diatribes.  The  response  of  the  people  of  Ohio 
was  emphatic.  At  the  October  election  Vallandigham 
was  defeated  by  more  than  one  hundred  thousand 
majority. 

In  sustaining  the  arrest  of  Vallandigham,  President 
Lincoln  had  acted  not  only  within  his  constitutional, 
but  also  strictly  within  his  legal,  authority.  In  the  pre- 


36o  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

ceding  March,  Congress  had  passed  an  act  legalizing  all 
orders  of  this  character  made  by  the  President  at  any 
time  during  the  rebellion,  and  accorded  him  full  indem 
nity  for  all  searches,  seizures,  and  arrests  or  imprison 
ments  made  under  his  orders.  The  act  also  provided : 

"That,  during  the  present  rebellion,  the  President  of 
the  United  States,  whenever  in  his  judgment  the  pub 
lic  safety  may  require  it,  is  authorized  to  suspend  the 
privilege  of  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus  in  any  case, 
throughout  the  United  States  or  any  part  thereof." 

About  the  middle  of  September,  Mr.  Lincoln's  pro 
clamation  formally  put  the  law  in  force,  to  obviate  any 
hindering  or  delaying  the  prompt  execution  of  the 
draft  law. 

Though  Vallandigham  and  the  Democrats  of  his 
type  were  unable  to  prevent  or  even  delay  the  draft, 
they  yet  managed  to  enlist  the  sympathies  and  secure 
the  adhesion  of  many  uneducated  and  unthinking  men 
by  means  of  secret  societies,  known  as  "Knights  of  the 
Golden  Circle,"  "The  Order  of  American  Knights," 
"Order  of  the  Star,"  "Sons  of  Liberty,"  and  by  other 
equally  high-sounding  names,  which  they  adopted  and 
discarded  in  turn,  as  one  after  the  other  was  discovered 
and  brought  into  undesired  prominence.  The  titles 
and  grips  and  passwords  of  these  secret  military  or 
ganizations,  the  turgid  eloquence  of  their  meetings,  and 
the  clandestine  drill  of  their  oath-bound  members, 
doubtless  exercised  quite  as  much  fascination  on  such 
followers  as  their  unlawful  object  of  aiding  and  abet 
ting  the  Southern  cause.  The  number  of  men  thus  en 
listed  in  the  work  of  inducing  desertion  among  Union 
soldiers,  fomenting  resistance  to  the  draft,  furnishing 
the  Confederates  with  arms,  and  conspiring  to  estab 
lish  a  Northwestern  Confederacy  in  full  accord  with 
the  South,  which  formed  the  ultimate  dream  of  their 


SECRET   SOCIETIES  361 

leaders,  is  hard  to  determine.  Vallandigham,  the  real 
head  of  the  movement,  claimed  five  hundred  thousand, 
and  Judge  Holt,  in  an  official  report,  adopted  that  as 
being  somewhere  near  the  truth,  though  others  counted 
them  at  a  full  million. 

The  government,  cognizant  of  their  existence,  and 
able  to  produce  abundant  evidence  against  the  ring 
leaders  whenever  it  chose  to  do  so,  wisely  paid  little 
heed  to  these  dark-lantern  proceedings,  though,  as  was 
perhaps  natural,  military  officers  commanding  the  de 
partments  in  which  they  were  most  numerous  were 
inclined  to  look  upon  them  more  seriously;  and  Gov 
ernor  Morton  of  Indiana  was  much  disquieted  by  their 
work  in  his  State. 

Mr.  Lincoln's  attitude  toward  them  was  one  of  good- 
humored  contempt.  "Nothing  can  make  me  believe 
that  one  hundred  thousand  Indiana  Democrats  are  dis 
loyal,"  he  said;  and  maintained  that  there  was  more 
folly  than  crime  in  their  act's.  Indeed,  though  prolific 
enough  of  oaths  and  treasonable  utterances,  these  or 
ganizations  were  singularly  lacking  in  energy  and  in 
itiative.  Most  of  the  attempts  made  against  the  pub 
lic  peace  in  the  free  States  and  along  the  northern 
border  came,  not  from  resident  conspirators,  but  from 
Southern  emissaries  and  their  Canadian  sympathizers; 
and  even  these  rarely  rose  above  the  level  of  ordinary 
arson  and  highway  robbery. 

Jacob  Thompson,  who  had  been  Secretary  of  the 
Interior  under  President  Buchanan,  was  the  principal 
agent  of  the  Confederate  government  in  Canada,  where 
he  carried  on  operations  as  remarkable  for  their  im 
practicability  as  for  their  malignity.  One  plan  during 
the  summer  of  1864  contemplated  nothing  less  than 
seizing  and  holding  the  three  great  States  of  Illinois, 
Indiana,  and  Ohio,  with  the  aid  of  disloyal  Democrats, 


362  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

whereupon  it  was  supposed  Missouri  and  Kentucky 
would  quickly  join  them  and  make  an  end  of  the  war. 
Becoming  convinced,  when  this  project  fell  through, 
that  nothing  could  be  expected  from  Northern  Demo 
crats,  he  placed  his  reliance  on  Canadian  sympathizers, 
and  turned  his  attention  to  liberating  the  Confederate 
prisoners  confined  on  Johnson's  Island  in  Sandusky 
Bay  and  at  Camp  Douglas  near  Chicago.  But  both 
these  elaborate  schemes,  which  embraced  such  mag 
nificent  details  as  capturing  the  war  steamer  Michigan 
on  Lake  Erie,  came  to  nought.  Nor  did  the  plans  to 
burn  St.  Louis  and  New  York,  and  to  destroy  steam 
boats  on  the  Mississippi  River,  to  which  he  also  gave 
his  sanction,  succeed  much  better.  A  very  few  men 
were  tried  and  punished  for  these  and  similar  crimes, 
despite  the  voluble  protest  of  the  Confederate  govern 
ment;  but  the  injuries  he  and  his  agents  were  able  to 
inflict,  like  the  acts  of  the  Knights  of  the  Golden  Circle 
on  the  American  side  of  the  border,  amounted  merely 
to  a  petty  annoyance,  and  never  reached  the  dignity  of 
real  menace  to  the  government. 


XXVI 

Burnside — Frederic ksburg — A  Tangle  of  Cross-Purposes 
— Hooker  Succeeds  Burnside — Lincoln  to  Hooker — 
Chance  II  orsville — Lee's  Second  Invasion — Lincoln's 
Criticisms  of  Hooker's  Plans — Hooker  Relieved — 
Meade — Gettysburg — Lee's  Retreat — Lincoln's  Letter 
to  Meade — Lincoln's  Gettysburg  Address — Autumn 
Strategy — The  Armies  go  into  Winter  Quarters 

IT  was  not  without  well-meditated  reasons  that  Mr. 
Lincoln  had  so  long  kept  McClellan  in  command  of 
the  Army  of  the  Potomac.  He  perfectly  understood 
that  general's  defects,  his  want  of  initiative,  his  hesita 
tions,  his  delays,  his  never-ending  complaints.  But  he 
had  long  foreseen  the  difficulty  which  would  and  did 
immediately  arise  when,  on  November  5,  1862,  he 
removed  him  from  command.  Whom  should  he  ap 
point  as  McClellan's  successor?  What  officer  would 
be  willing  and  competent  to  play  a  better  part?  That 
important  question  had  also  long  been  considered ;  sev 
eral  promising  generals  had  been  consulted,  who,  as 
gracefully  as  they  could,  shrank  from  the  responsibility 
even  before  it  was  formally  offered  them. 

The  President  finally  appointed  General  Ambrose 
E.  Burnside  to  the  command.  He  was  a  West  Point 
graduate,  thirty-eight  years  old,  of  handsome  pres 
ence,  brave  and  generous  to  a  fault,  and  McClellan's 
intimate  friend.  He  had  won  a  favorable  reputation 
in  leading  the  expedition  against  Roanoke  Island  and 
the  North  Carolina  coast;  and,  called  to  reinforce 

363 


364  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

McClellan  after  the  Peninsula  disaster,  commanded 
the  left  wing  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  at  Antietam. 
He  was  not  covetous  of  the  honor  now  given  him.  He 
had  already  twice  declined  it,  and  only  now  accepted 
the  command  as  a  duty  under  the  urgent  advice  of 
members  of  his  staff.  His  instincts  were  better  than 
the  judgment  of  his  friends.  A  few  brief  weeks  suf 
ficed  to  demonstrate  what  he  had  told  them — that  he 
"was  not  competent  to  command  such  a  large  army." 

The  very  beginning  of  his  work  proved  the  truth  of 
his  self-criticism.  Rejecting  all  the  plans  of  campaign 
which  were  suggested  to  him,  he  found  himself  incapa 
ble  of  forming  any  very  plausible  or  consistent  one  of 
his  own.  As  a  first  move  he  concentrated  his  army 
opposite  the  town  of  Fredericksburg  on  the  lower  Rap- 
pahannock,  but  with  such  delays  that  General  Lee  had 
time  to  seize  and  strongly  fortify  the  town  and  the 
important  adjacent  heights  on  the  south  bank;  and 
when  Burnside's  army  crossed  on  December  u,  and 
made  its  main  and  direct  attack  on  the  formidable  and 
practically  impregnable  Confederate  intrenchments  on 
the  thirteenth,  a  crushing  repulse  and  defeat  of  the 
Union  forces,  with  a  loss  of  over  ten  thousand  killed 
and  wounded,  was  the  quick  and  direful  result. 

It  was  in  a  spirit  of  stubborn  determination  rather 
than  clear,  calculating  courage  that  he  renewed  his 
orders  for  an  attack  on  the  fourteenth;  but,  dissuaded 
by  his  division  and  corps  commanders  from  the  rash 
experiment,  succeeded  without  further  damage  in  with 
drawing  his  forces  on  the  night  of  the  fifteenth  to 
their  old  camps  north  of  the  river.  In  manly  words 
his  report  of  the  unfortunate  battle  gave  generous 
praise  to  his  officers  and  men,  and  assumed  for  him 
self  all  the  responsibility  for  the  attack  and  its  failure. 
But  its  secondary  consequences  soon  became  irreme- 


BURNSIDE  365 

diable.  By  that  gloomy  disaster  Burnside  almost 
completely  lost  the  confidence  of  his  officers  and  men, 
and  rumors  soon  came  to  the  President  that  a  spirit 
akin  to  mutiny  pervaded  the  army.  \Yhen  informa 
tion  came  that,  on  the  day  after  Christmas,  Burnside 
was  preparing  for  a  new  campaign,  the  President 
telegraphed  him : 

"I  have  good  reason  for  saying  you  must  not  make 
a  general  movement  of  the  army  without  letting  me 
know." 

This,  naturally,  brought  Burnside  to  the  President 
for  explanation,  and,  after  a  frank  and  full  discussion 
between  them,  Mr.  Lincoln,  on  New  Year's  day,  wrote 
the  following  letter  to  General  Halleck : 

"General  Burnside  wishes  to  cross  the  Rappahan- 
nock  with  his  army,  but  his  grand  division  commanders 
all  oppose  the  movement.  If  in  such  a  difficulty  as  this 
you  do  not  help,  you  fail  me  precisely  in  the  point  for 
which  I  sought  your  assistance.  You  know  what 
General  Burnside's  plan  is,  and  it  is  my  wish  that  you 
go  with  him  to  the  ground,  examine  it  as  far  as  prac 
ticable,  confer  with  the  officers,  getting  their  judgment 
and  ascertaining  their  temper;  in  a  word,  gather  all 
the  elements  for  forming  a  judgment  of  your  own, 
and  then  tell  General  Burnside  that  you  do  approve, 
or  that  you  do  not  approve,  his  plan.  Your  military 
skill  is  useless  to  me  if  you  will  not  do  this." 

Halleck's  moral  and  official  courage,  however,  failed 
the  President  in  this  emergency.  He  declined  to  give 
his  military  opinion,  and  asked  to  be  relieved  from 
further  duties  as  general-in-chief.  This  left  Mr.  Lin 
coln  no  option,  and  still  having  need  of  the  advice  of 
his  general-in-chief  on  other  questions,  he  indorsed 
on  his  own  letter,  "withdrawn  because  considered  harsh 
by  General  Halleck."  The  complication,  however, 


366  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

continued  to  grow  worse,  and  the  correspondence  more 
strained.  Burnside  declared  that  the  country  had  lost 
confidence  in  both  the  Secretary  of  War  and  the  gen- 
eral-in-chief ;  also,  that  his  own  generals  were  unani 
mously  opposed  to  again  crossing  the  Rappahannock. 
Halleck,  on  the  contrary,  urged  another  crossing,  but 
that  it  must  be  made  on  Burnside's  own  decision,  plan, 
and  responsibility.  Upon  this  the  President,  on  Janu 
ary  8,  1863,  again  wrote  Burnside: 

"I  understand  General  Halleck  has  sent  you  a  letter 
of  which  this  is  a  copy.  I  approve  this  letter.  I  de 
plore  the  want  of  concurrence  with  you  in  opinion  by 
your  general  officers,  but  I  do  not  see  the  remedy.  Be 
cautious,  and  do  not  understand  that  the  government 
or  country  is  driving  you.  I  do  not  yet  see  how  I 
could  profit  by  changing  the  command  of  the  Army  of 
the  Potomac;  and  if  I  did,  I  should  not  wish  to  do  it 
by  accepting  the  resignation  of  your  commission." 

Once  more  Burnside  issued  orders  against  which 
his  generals  protested,  and  which  a  storm  turned  into 
the  fruitless  and  impossible  "mud  march"  before  he 
reached  the  intended  crossings  of  the  Rappahannock. 
Finally,  on  January  23,  Burnside  presented  to  the 
President  the  alternative  of  either  approving  an  order 
dismissing  about  a  dozen  generals,  or  accepting  his 
own  resignation,  and  Mr.  Lincoln  once  more  had 
before  him  the  difficult  task  of  finding  a  new  com 
mander  for  the  Army  of  the  Potomac.  On  January 
25,  1863,  the  President  relieved  Burnside  and  assigned 
Major-General  Joseph  Hooker  to  duty  as  his  successor; 
and  in  explanation  of  his  action  wrote  him  the  follow 
ing  characteristic  letter: 

"I  have  placed  you  at  the  head  of  the  Army  of  the 
Potomac.  Of  course  I  have  done  this  upon  what  ap 
pear  to  me  to  be  sufficient  reasons,  and  yet  I  think  it 


LINCOLN  TO  HOOKER  367 

best  for  you  to  know  that  there  are  some  things  in 
regard  to  which  I  am  not  quite  satisfied  with  you.  I 
believe  you  to  be  a  brave  and  skilful  soldier,  which, 
of  course,  I  like.  I  also  believe  you  do  not  mix  politics 
with  your  profession,  in  which  you  are  right.  You 
have  confidence  in  yourself,  which  is  a  valuable,  if 
not  an  indispensable  quality.  You  are  ambitious, 
which,  within  reasonable  bounds,  does  good  rather 
than  harm ;  but  I  think  that  during  General  Burnside's 
command  of  the  army  you  have  taken  counsel  of  your 
ambition  and  thwarted  him  as  much  as  you  could,  in 
which  you  did  a  great  wrong  to  the  country,  and  to 
a  most  meritorious  and  honorable  brother  officer.  I 
have  heard,  in  such  a  way  as  to  believe  it,  of  your  re 
cently  saying  that  both  the  army  and  the  government 
needed  a  dictator.  Of  course  it  was  not  for  this,  but 
in  spite  of  it,  that  I  have  given  you  the  command. 
Only  those  generals  who  gain  successes  can  set  up  dic 
tators.  What  I  now  ask  of  you  is  military  success, 
and  I  will  risk  the  dictatorship.  The  government 
will  support  you  to  the  utmost  of  its  ability,  which  is 
neither  more  nor  less  than  it  has  done  and  will  do  for 
all  commanders.  I  much  fear  that  the  spirit  which 
you  have  aided  to  infuse  into  the  army,  of  criticizing 
their  commander  and  withholding  confidence  from 
him,  will  now  turn  upon  you.  I  shall  assist  you  as  far 
as  I  can  to  put  it  down.  Neither  you  nor  Napoleon, 
if  he  were  alive  again,  could  get  any  good  out  of  an 
army  while  such  a  spirit  prevails  in  it;  and  now  be 
ware  of  rashness.  Beware  of  rashness,  but  with  en 
ergy  and  sleepless  vigilance  go  forward  and  give  us 
victories." 

Perhaps  the  most  remarkable  thing  in  this  letter  is 
the  evidence  it  gives  how  completely  the  genius  of  Pres 
ident  Lincoln  had  by  this,  the  middle  of  his  presidential 


368  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

term,  risen  to  the  full  height  of  his  great  national  du 
ties  and  responsibilities.  From  beginning  to  end  it 
speaks  the  language  and  breathes  the  spirit  of  the  great 
ruler,  secure  in  popular  confidence  and  official  author 
ity,  equal  to  the  great  emergencies  that  successively 
rose  before  him.  Upon  General  Hooker  its  courteous 
praise  and  frank  rebuke,  its  generous  trust  and  distinct 
note  of  fatherly  warning,  made  a  profound  impression. 
He  strove  worthily  to  redeem  his  past  indiscretions  by 
devoting  himself  with  great  zeal  and  energy  to  im 
proving  the  discipline  and  morale  of  his  army,  recalling 
its  absentees,  and  restoring  its  spirit  by  increased  drill 
and  renewed  activity.  He  kept  the  President  well 
informed  of  what  he  was  doing,  and  early  in  April 
submitted  a  plan  of  campaign  on  which  Mr.  Lincoln 
indorsed,  on  the  eleventh  of  that  month : 

"My  opinion  is  that  just  now,  with  the  enemy  di 
rectly  ahead  of  us,  there  is  no  eligible  route  for  us  into 
Richmond;  and  consequently  a  question  of  preference 
between  the  Rappahannock  route  and  the  James  River 
route  is  a  contest  about  nothing.  Hence,  our  prime 
object  is  the  enemy's  army  in  front  of  us,  and  is  not 
with  or  about  Richmond  at  all,  unless  it  be  incidental 
to  the  main  object." 

Having  raised  his  effective  force  to  about  one  hun 
dred  and  thirty  thousand  men,  and  learning  that  Lee's 
army  was  weakened  by  detachments  to  perhaps  half 
that  number,  Hooker,  near  the  end  of  the  month,  pre 
pared  and  executed  a  bold  movement  which  for  a  while 
was  attended  with  encouraging  progress.  Sending 
General  Sedgwick  with  three  army  corps  to  make  a 
strong  demonstration  and  crossing  below  Fredericks- 
burg,  Hooker  with  his  remaining  four  corps  made  a 
somewhat  long  and  circuitous  march  by  which  he 
crossed  both  the  Rappahannock  and  the  Rapidan  above 


CHANCELLORSVILLE  369 

the  town  without  serious  opposition,  and  on  the  even 
ing  of  April  30  had  his  four  corps  at  Chancellorsville, 
south  of  the  Rappahannock,  from  whence  he  could 
advance  against  the  rear  of  the  enemy.  But  his  ad 
vantage  of  position  was  neutralized  by  the  difficulties 
of  the  ground.  He  was  in  the  dense  and  tangled 
forest  known  as  the  Wilderness,  and  the  decision  and 
energy  of  his  brilliant  and  successful  advance  were 
suddenly  succeeded  by  a  spirit  of  hesitation  and  delay 
in  which  the  evident  and  acknowledged  chances  of 
victory  were  gradually  lost.  The  enemy  found  time 
to  rally  from  his  surprise  and  astonishment,  to  gather  a 
strong  line  of  defense,  and  finally,  to  organize  a  counter 
flank  movement  under  Stonewall  Jackson,  which  fell 
upon  the  rear  of  the  Union  right  and  created  a  panic 
in  the  Eleventh  Corps.  Sedgwick's  force  had  crossed 
below  and  taken  Fredericksburg ;  but  the  divided  Union 
army  could  not  effect  a  junction;  and  the  fighting  from 
May  i  to  May  4  finally  ended  by  the  withdrawal  of 
both  sections  of  the  Union  army  north  of  the  Rappa- 
hannock.  The  losses  suffered  by  the  Union  and  the 
Confederate  forces  were  about  equal,  but  the  prestige  of 
another  brilliant  victory  fell  to  General  Lee,  seriously 
balanced,  however,  by  the  death  of  Stonewall  Jackson, 
who  was  accidentally  killed  by  the  fire  of  his  own 
men. 

In  addition  to  his  evident  very  unusual  diminution 
of  vigor  and  will,  Hooker  had  received  a  personal  in 
jury  on  the  third,  which  for  some  hours  rendered  him 
incapable  of  command;  and  he  said  in  his  testimony 
before  the  Committee  on  the  Conduct  of  the  War : 

"When  I  returned  from  Chancellorsville  I  felt  that 
I  had  fought  no  battle ;  in  fact,  T  had  more  men  than 
I  could  use,  and  I  fought  no  general  battle  for  the  rea 
son  that  I  could  not  get  my  men  in  position  to  do  so; 


370  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

probably  not  more  than  three  or  three  "and  a  half  corps 
on  the  right  were  engaged  in  the  fight." 

Hooker's  defeat  at  Chancellorsville  had  not  been  so 
great  a  disaster  as  that  of  Burnside  at  Fredericksburg ; 
and  while  his  influence  was  greatly  impaired,  his  use 
fulness  did  not  immediately  cease.  The  President  and 
the  Secretary  of  War  still  had  faith  in  him.  The  aver 
age  opinion  of  his  qualities  has  been  tersely  expressed 
by  one  of  his  critics,  who  wrote :  "As  an  inferior  he 
planned  badly  and  fought  well ;  as  a  chief  he  planned 
well  and  fought  badly/'  The  course  of  war  soon 
changed,  so  that  he  was  obliged  to  follow  rather  than 
permitted  to  lead  the  developments  of  a  new  campaign. 

The  brilliant  victories  gained  by  Lee  inspired  the 
Confederate  authorities  and  leaders  with  a  greatly  ex 
aggerated  hope  of  the  ultimate  success  of  the  rebellion. 
It  was  during  the  summer  of  1863  that  the  Confed 
erate  armies  reached,  perhaps,  their  highest  numerical 
strength  and  greatest  degree  of  efficiency.  Both  the 
long  dreamed  of  possibility  of  achieving  Southern  in 
dependence,  and  the  newly  flushed  military  ardor  of 
officers  and  men,  elated  by  what  seemed  to  them  an 
unbroken  record  of  successes  on  the  Virginia  battle 
fields,  moved  General  Lee  to  the  bold  hazard  of  a  sec 
ond  invasion  of  the  North.  Early  in  June,  Hooker 
gave  it  as  his  opinion  that  Lee  intended  to  move  against 
Washington,  and  asked  whether  in  that  case  he  should 
attack  the  Confederate  rear.  To  this  Lincoln  answered 
on  the  fifth  of  that  month : 

"In  case  you  find  Lee  coming  to  the  north  of  the 
Rappahannock,  I  would  by  no  means  cross  to  the  south 
of  it.  If  he  should  leave  a  rear  force  at  Fredericks- 
burg,  tempting  you  to  fall  upon  it,  it  would  fight  in 
intrenchments  and  have  you  at  disadvantage,  and  so, 
man  for  man,  worst  you  at  that  point,  while  his  main 


LINCOLN   TO   HOOKER  371 

force  would  in  some  way  be  getting  an  advantage  of 
you  northward.  In  one  word,  I  would  not  take  any 
risk  of  being  entangled  upon  the  river,  like  an  ox 
jumped  half  over  a  fence  and  liable  to  be  torn  by  dogs 
front  and  rear,  without  a  fair  chance  to  gore  one  way 
or  kick  the  other." 

Five  days  later,  Hooker,  having  become  convinced 
that  a  large  part  of  Lee's  army  was  in  motion  toward 
the  Shenandoah  valley,  proposed  the  daring  plan  of 
a  quick  and  direct  march  to  capture  Richmond.  But 
the  President  immediately  telegraphed  him  a  convinc 
ing  objection : 

"If  left  to  me,  I  would  not  go  south  of  the  Rappahan- 
nock  upon  Lee's  moving  north  of  it.  If  you  had  Rich 
mond  invested  to-day,  you  would  not  be  able  to  take 
it  in  twenty  days;  meanwhile,  your  communications, 
and  with  them  your  army,  would  be  ruined.  I  think 
Lee's  army,  and  not  Richmond,  is  your  true  objective 
point.  If  he  comes  toward  the  upper  Potomac,  follow 
on  his  flank  and  on  his  inside  track,  shortening  your 
lines  while  he  lengthens  his.  Fight  him,  too,  when 
opportunity  offers.  If  he  stays  where  he  is,  fret  him 
and  fret  him." 

The  movement  northward  of  Lee's  army,  effectually 
masked  for  some  days  by  frequent  cavalry  skirmishes, 
now  became  evident  to  the  Washington  authorities. 
On  June  14,  Lincoln  telegraphed  Hooker: 

"So  far  as  we  can  make  out  here,  the  enemy  have 
Milroy  surrounded  at  Winchester,  and  Tyler  at  Mar- 
tinsburg.  If  they  could  hold  out  a  few  days,  could 
you  help  them?  If  the  head  of  Lee's  army  is  at  Mar- 
tinsburg,  and  the  tail  of  it  on  the  plank  road  between 
Fredericksburg  and  Chancellorsville,  the  animal  must 
be  very  slim  somewhere.  Could  you  not  break  him?" 

While  Lee,   without  halting,   crossed  the   Potomac 


372  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

above  Harper's  Ferry,  and  continued  his  northward 
march  into  Maryland  and  Pennsylvania,  Hooker  pru 
dently  followed  on  the  "inside  track"  as  Mr.  Lincoln 
had  suggested,  interposing  the  Union  army  effectually 
to  guard  Washington  and  Baltimore.  But  at  this  point 
a  long-standing  irritation  and  jealousy  between  Hooker 
and  Halleck  became  so  acute  that  on  the  general-in- 
chief's  refusing  a  comparatively  minor  request,  Hooker 
asked  to  be  relieved  from  command.  The  President, 
deeming  divided  counsel  at  so  critical  a  juncture  more 
hazardous  than  a  change  of  command,  took  Hooker 
at  his  word,  and  appointed  General  George  G.  Meade 
as  his  successor. 

Meade  had,  since  Chancellorsville,  been  as  caustic  a 
critic  of  Hooker  as  Hooker  was  of  Burnside  at  and 
after  Fredericksburg.  But  all  spirit  of  insubordina 
tion  vanished  in  the  exciting  stress  of  a  pursuing  cam 
paign,  and  the  new  and  retiring  leaders  of  the  Army 
of  the  Potomac  exchanged  compliments  in  General 
Orders  with  high  chivalric  courtesy,  while  the  army 
continued  its  northward  march  with  undiminished 
ardor  and  unbroken  step.  When  Meade  crossed  the 
Pennsylvania  line,  Lee  was  already  far  ahead,  threat 
ening  Harrisburg.  The  Confederate  invasion  spread 
terror  and  loss  among  farms  and  villages,  and  created 
almost  a  panic  in  the  great  cities.  Under  the  Presi 
dent's  call  for  one  hundred  thousand  six  months'  mili 
tia,  six  of  the  adjoining  States  were  sending  hurried 
and  improvised  forces  to  the  banks  of  the  Susquehanna, 
under  the  command  of  General  Couch.  Lee,  finding 
that  stream  too  wrell  guarded,  turned  his  course  directly 
east,  which,  with  Meade  marching  to  the  north,  brought 
the  opposing  armies  into  inevitable  contact  and  collision 
at  the  town  of  Gettysburg. 

Meade  had   both   expected   and   carefully   prepared 


GETTYSBURG  373 

to  receive  the  attack  and  fight  a  defensive  battle  on  the 
line  of  Pipe  Creek.  But  when,  on  the  afternoon  of  July 
i,  1863,  the  advance  detachments  of  each  army  met  and 
engaged  in  a  fierce  conflict  for  the  possession  of  the 
town,  Meade,  on  learning  the  nature  of  the  fight,  and 
the  situation  of  the  ground,  instantly  decided  to  accept 
it,  and  ordering  forward  his  whole  force,  made  it  the 
principal  and  most  decisive  battle-field  of  the  whole 
war. 

The  Union  troops  made  a  violent  and  stubborn  effort 
to  hold  the  town  of  Gettysburg;  but  the  early  Confed 
erate  arrivals,  taking  position  in  a  half-circle  on  the 
west,  north,  and  east,  drove  them  through  and  out  of  it. 
The  seeming  reverse  proved  an  advantage.  Half  a 
mile  to  the  south  it  enabled  the  Union  detachments  to 
seize  and  establish  themselves  on  Cemetery  Ridge  and 
Hill.  This,  with  several  rocky  elevations,  and  a  crest 
of  boulders  making  a  curve  td  the  east  at  the  northern 
end,  was  in  itself  almost  a  natural  fortress,  and  with  the 
intrenchments  thrown  up  by  the  expert  veterans,  soon 
became  nearly  impregnable.  Beyond  a  wide  valley 
to  the  west,  and  parallel  with  it,  lay  Seminary  Ridge, 
on  which  the  Confederate  army  established  itself  with 
equal  rapidity.  Lee  had  also  hoped  to  fight  a  defensive 
battle;  but  thus  suddenly  arrested  in  his  eastward 
march  in  a  hostile  country,  could  not  afford  to  stand 
still  and  wait. 

On  the  morning  of  July  2,  both  commanding  gen 
erals  were  in  the  field.  After  careful  studies  and  con 
sultations,  Lee  ordered  an  attack  on  both  the  extreme 
right  and  extreme  left  of  the  Union  position,  meeting 
some  success  in  the  former,  but  a  'complete  repulse  in 
the  latter.  That  night,  Meade's  council  of  war,  coin 
ciding  with  his  own  judgment,  resolved  to  stand  and 
fight  it  out ;  while  Lee,  against  the  advice  of  Long- 


374  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

street,  his  ablest  general,  with  equal  decision  deter 
mined  to  risk  the  chance  of  a  final  and  determined 
attack. 

It  was  Meade  who  began  the  conflict  at  dawn  on  the 
morning  of  July  3,  but  only  long  enough  to  retake 
and  hold  the  intrenchments  on  his  extreme  right, 
which  he  had  lost  the  evening  before;  then  for  some 
hours  an  ominous  lull  and  silence  fell  over  the  whole 
battle-field.  But  these  were  hours  of  stern  prepara 
tion.  At  midday  a  furious  cannonade  began  from  one 
hundred  and  thirty  Confederate  guns  on  Seminary 
Ridge,  which  was  answered  with  promptness  and  spirit 
by  about  seventy  Union  guns  from  the  crests  and 
among  the  boulders  of  Cemetery  Ridge ;  and  the  deaf 
ening  roar  of  artillery  lasted  for  about  an  hour,  at  the 
end  of  which  time  the  Union  guns  ceased  firing  and 
were  allowed  to  cool,  and  to  be  made  ready  to  meet  the 
assault  that  was  sure  to  come.  There  followed  a  period 
of  waiting  almost  painful  to  officers  and  men,  in  its  in 
tense  expectancy;  and  then  across  the  broad,  undu 
lating,  and  highly  cultivated  valley  swept  the  long 
attacking  line  of  seventeen  thousand  rebel  infantry, 
the  very  flower  of  the  Confederate  army.  But  it  was  a 
hopeless  charge.  Thinned,  almost  mowed  down  by  the 
grape-shot  of  the  Union  batteries  and  the  deadly  aim 
of  the  Union  riflemen  behind  their  rocks  and  intrench 
ments,  the  Confederate  assault  wravered,  hesitated, 
struggled  on,  and  finally  melted  away  before  the  de 
structive  fire.  A  few  rebel  battle-flags  reached  the 
crest,  only,  however,  to  fall,  and  their  bearers  and  sup 
porters  to  be  made  prisoners.  The  Confederate  dream 
of  taking  Philadelphia  and  dictating  peace  and  separa 
tion  in  Independence  Hall  was  over  forever. 

It  is  doubtful  whether  Lee  immediately  realized  the 
full  measure  of  his  defeat,  or  Meade  the  magnitude  of 


LEE'S   RETREAT  375 

his  victory.  The  terrible  losses  of  the  battle  of  Gettys 
burg — over  three  thousand  killed,  fourteen  thousand 
wounded,  and  five  thousand  captured  or  missing  of  the 
Union  army;  and  twenty-six  hundred  killed,  twelve 
thousand  wounded,  and  five  thousand  missing  of  the 
Confederates — largely  occupied  the  thoughts  and  la^ 
bors  of  both  sides  during  the  national  holiday  which 
followed.  It  was  a  surprise  to  Meade  that  on  the  morn 
ing  of  July  5  the  Confederate  army  had  disappeared,  re 
treating  as  rapidly  as  might  be  to  the  neighborhood  of 
Harper's  Ferry.  Unable  immediately  to  cross  because 
the  Potomac  was  swollen  by  heavy  rains,  and  Meade 
having  followed  and  arrived  in  Lee's  front  on  July  10, 
President  Lincoln  had  the  liveliest  hopes  that  Meade 
would  again  attack  and  capture  or  destroy  the  Con 
federate  army.  Generous  praise  for  his  victory,  and 
repeated  and  urgent  suggestions  to  renew  his  attack 
and  end  the  rebellion,  had  gone  to  Meade  from  the 
President  and  General  Halleck.  But  Meade  hesitated, 
and  his  council  of  war  objected ;  and  on  the  night  of 
July  13  Lee  recrossed  the  Potomac  in  retreat.  When 
he  heard  the  news,  Mr.  Lincoln  sat  down  and  wrote  a 
letter  of  criticism  and  disappointment  which  reflects 
the  intensity  of  his  feeling  at  the  escape  of  Lee : 

"The  case,  summarily  stated,  is  this :  You  fought 
and  beat  the  enemy  at  Gettysburg,  and,  of  course,  to 
say  the  least,  his  loss  was  as  great  as  yours.  He  re 
treated,  and  you  did  not,  as  it  seefned  to  me,  pressingly 
pursue  him;  but  a  flood  in  the  river  detained  him  till, 
by  slow  degrees,  you  were  again  upon  him.  You  had 
at  least  twenty  thousand  veteran  troops  directly  with 
you,  and  as  many  more  raw  ones  within  supporting 
distance,  all  in  addition  to  those  who  fought  with  you 
at  Gettysburg,  while  it  was  not  possible  that  he  had 
received  a  single  recruit,  and  yet  you  stood  and  let  the 


376  ABRAHAM   LINCOLN 

flood  run  down,  bridges  be  built,  and  the  enemy  move 
away  at  his  leisure,  without  attacking  him.  .  .  . 
Again,  my  dear  general,  I  do  not  believe  you  appre 
ciate  the  magnitude  of  the  misfortune  involved  in  Lee's 
escape.  He  was  within  your  easy  grasp,  and  to  have 
closed  upon  him  would,  in  connection  with  our  other 
late  successes,  have  ended  the  war.  As  it  is,  the  war 
will  be  prolonged  indefinitely.  If  you  could  not  safely 
attack  Lee  last  Monday,  how  can  you  possibly  do  so 
south  of  the  river,  when  you  can  take  with  you  very 
few  more  than  two  thirds  of  the  force  you  then  had 
in  hand  ?  It  would  be  unreasonable  to  expect,  and  I  do 
not  expect  [that]  you  can  now  effect  much.  Your 
golden  opportunity  is  gone,  and  I  am  distressed  im 
measurably  because  of  it." 

Clearly  as  Mr.  Lincoln  had  sketched  and  deeply  as 
he  felt  Meade's  fault  of  omission,  so  quick  was  the 
President's  spirit  of  forgiveness,  and  so  thankful  was 
he  for  the  measure  of  success  which  had  been  gained, 
that  he  never  signed  or  sent  the  letter. 

Two  memorable  events  are  forever  linked  with  the 
Gettysburg  victory :  the  surrender  of  Vicksburg  to 
Grant  on  the  same  fourth  of  July,  described  in  the 
next  chapter,  and  the  dedication  of  the  Gettysburg 
battle-field  as  a  national  cemetery  for  Union  soldiers, 
on  November  19,  1863,  on  which  occasion  President 
Lincoln  crowned  that  imposing  ceremonial  with  an 
address  of  such  literary  force,  brevity,  and  beauty,  that 
critics  have  assigned  it  a  high  rank  among  the  world's 
historic  orations.  He  said  : 

"Fourscore  and  seven  years  ago  our  fathers  brought 
forth  on  this  continent  a  new  nation,  conceived  in  lib 
erty,  and  dedicated  to  the  proposition  that  all  men  are 
created  equal. 

"Now  we  are  engaged  in  a  great  civil  war,  testing 


GETTYSBURG  ADDRESS  377 

whether  that  nation,  or  any  nation  so  conceived  and  so 
dedicated,  can  long  endure.  We  are  met  on  a  great 
battle-field  of  that  war.  We  have  come  to  dedicate 
a  portion  of  that  field  as  a  final  resting-place  for  those 
who  here  gave  their  lives  that  that  nation  might  live. 
It  is  altogether  fitting  and  proper  that  we  should  do 
this. 

"But,  in  a  larger  sense,  we  cannot  dedicate — we  can 
not  consecrate — \ve  cannot  hallow — this  ground.  The 
brave  men,  living  and  dead,  who  struggled  here  have 
consecrated  it  far  above  our  poor  power  to  add  or  de 
tract.  The  world  will  little  note  nor  long  remember 
what  \ve  say  here,  but  it  can  never  forget  what  they  did 
here.  It  is  for  us,  the  living,  rather,  to  be  dedicated 
here  to  the  unfinished  work  which  they  who  fought 
here  have  thus  far  so  nobly  advanced.  It  is  rather  for 
us  to  be  here  dedicated  to  the  great  task  remaining 
before  us — that  from  these  honored  dead  we  take 
increased  devotion  to  that  cause  for  which  they  gave 
the  last  full  measure  of  devotion ;  that  we  here  highly 
resolve  that  these  dead  shall  not  have  died  in  vain ;  that 
this  nation,  under  God,  shall  have  a  new  birth  of  free 
dom  ;  and  that  government  of  the  people,  by  the  people, 
for  the  people,  shall  not  perish  from  the  earth." 

Having  safely  crossed  the  Potomac,  the  Confederate 
army  continued  its  retreat  without  halting  to  the  famil 
iar  camps  in  central  Virginia  it  had  so  long  and  val 
iantly  defended.  Meade  followed  with  alert  but  pru 
dent  vigilance,  but  did  not  again  find  such  chances  as  he 
lost  on  the  fourth  of  July,  or  while  the  swollen  waters 
of  the  Potomac  held  his  enemy  as  in  a  trap.  During 
the  ensuing  autumn  months  there  went  on  between  the 
opposing  generals  an  unceasing  game  of  strategy,  a 
succession  of  moves  and  counter-moves  in  which  the 
opposing  commanders  handled  their  great  armies  with 


378  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

the  same  consumate  skill  with  which  the  expert  fenc 
ing-master  uses  his  foil,  but  in  which  neither  could 
break  through  the  other's  guard.  Repeated  minor  en 
counters  took  place  which,  in  other  wars,  would  have 
rated  as  heavy  battles;  but  the  weeks  lengthened  into 
months  without  decisive  results,  and  when  the  opposing 
armies  finally  went  into  winter  quarters  in  December, 
1863,  they  again  confronted  each  other  across  the 
Rapidan  in  Virginia,  not  very  far  south  of  where  they 
lay  in  the  winter  of  1861. 


XXVIL 

Bucll  and  Bragg — Perryville — Rosecrans  and  Murfrees- 
boro — Grant's  Vicksburg  Experiments — Grant's  May 
Battles — Siege  and  Surrender  of  Vicksburg — Lincoln 
to  Grant — Rosecrans1  s  March  to  Chattanooga — Battle 
of  Chickamauga — Grant  at  Chattanooga — Battle  of 
Chattanooga — Burnside  at  Knoxville — Burnside  Re 
pulses  Long  street 

FROM  the  Virginia  campaigns  of  1863  we  must  re 
turn  to  the  Western  campaigns  of  the  same  year, 
or,  to  be  more  precise,  beginning  with  the  middle  of 
1862.  When,  in  July  of  that  year,  Halleck  was  called 
to  Washington  to  become  general-in-chief,  the  princi 
pal  plan  he  left  behind  was  that  Buell,  with  the  bulk  of 
the  forces  which  had  captured  Corinth,  should  move 
from  that  place  eastward  to  occupy  eastern  Tennessee. 
Buell,  however,  progressed  so  leisurely  that  before  he 
reached  Chattanooga  the  Confederate  General  Bragg, 
by  a  swift  northward  movement,  advanced  into  eastern 
Kentucky,  enacted  the  farce  of  appointing  a  Confed 
erate  governor  for  that  State,  and  so  threatened  Louis 
ville  that  Buell  was  compelled  abruptly  to  abandon  his 
eastward  march  and,  turning  to  the  north,  run  a  neck- 
and-neck  race  to  save  Louisville  from  rebel  occupation. 
Successful  in  this,  Buell  immediately  turned  and,  pur 
suing  the  now  retreating  forces  of  Bragg,  brought 
them  to  bay  at  Perryville,  where,  on  October  8,  was 
fought  a  considerable  battle  from  which  Bragg  imme 
diately  retreated  out  of  Kentucky. 

379 


38o  ABRAHAM   LINCOLN 

While  on  one  hand  Bragg  had  suffered  defeat,  he 
had  on  the  other  caused  Buell  to  give  up  all  idea  of 
moving  into  East  Tennessee,  an  object  on  which  the 
President  had  specially  and  repeatedly  insisted.  When 
Halleck  specifically  ordered  Buell  to  resume  and  exe 
cute  that  plan,  Buell  urged  such  objections,  and  inti 
mated  such  unwillingness,  that  on  October  24,  1862, 
he  was  relieved  from  command,  and  General  Rosecrans 
was  appointed  to  succeed  him.  Rosecrans  neglected 
the  East  Tennessee  orders  as  heedlessly  as  Buell  had 
done;  but,  reorganizing  the  Army  of  the  Cumberland 
and  strengthening  his  communications,  marched  against 
Bragg,  who  had  gone  into  winter  quarters  at  Murfrees- 
boro.  The  severe  engagement  of  that  name,  fought  on 
December  31,  1862,  and  the  three  succeeding  days  of 
the  new  year,  between  forces  numbering  about  forty- 
three  thousand  on  each  side,  was  tactically  a  drawn 
battle,  but  its  results  rendered  it  an  important  Union 
victory,  compelling  Bragg  to  retreat;  though,  for  rea 
sons  which  he  never  satisfactorily  explained,  Rose 
crans  failed  for  six  months  to  follow  up  his  evident 
advantages. 

The  transfer  of  Halleck  from  the  West  to  Washing 
ton  in  the  summer  of  1862,  left  Grant  in  command  of 
the  district  of  West  Tennessee.  But  Buell's  eastward 
expedition  left  him  so  few  movable  troops  that  dur 
ing  the  summer  and  most  of  the  autumn  he  was  able  to 
accomplish  little  except  to  defend  his  department  by 
the  repulse  of  the  enemy  at  luka  in  September,  and 
at  Corinth  early  in  October,  Rosecrans  being  in  local 
command  at  both  places.  It  was  for  these  successes 
that  Rosecrans  was  chosen  to  succeed  Buell. 

Grant  had  doubtless  given  much  of  his  enforced  lei 
sure  to  studying  the  great  problem  of  opening  the 
Mississippi,  a  task  which  was  thus  left  in  his  own 


VICKSBURG  381 

hands,  but  for  which,  as  yet,  he  found  neither  a  theo 
retical  solution,  nor  possessed  an  army  sufficiently 
strong  to  begin  practical  work.  Under  the  most  favor 
able  aspects,  it  was  a  formidable  undertaking.  Union 
gunboats  had  full  control  of  the  great  river  from  Cairo 
as  far  south  as  Vicksburg;  and  Farragut's  fleet  com 
manded  it  from  New  Orleans  as  far  north  as  Port  Hud 
son.  But  the  intervening  link  of  two  hundred  miles  be 
tween  these  places  was  in  as  complete  possession  of  the 
Confederates,  giving  the  rebellion  uninterrupted  access 
to  the  immense  resources  in  men  and  supplies  of  the 
trans-Mississippi  country,  and  effectually  barring  the 
free  navigation  of  the  river.  Both  the  cities  named 
were  strongly  fortified,  but  Vicksburg,  on  the  east 
bank,  by  its  natural  situation  on  a  bluff  two  hundred 
feet  high,  rising  almost  out  of  the  stream,  was  un 
assailable  from  the  river  front.  Farragut  had,  indeed, 
in  midsummer  passed  up  and  down  before  it  with  little 
damage  from  its  fire ;  but,  in  return,  his  own  guns  could 
no  more  do  harm  to  its  batteries  than  they  could  have 
bombarded  a  fortress  in  the  clouds. 

When,  by  the  middle  of  November,  1862,  Grant  was 
able  to  reunite  sufficient  reinforcements,  he  started 
on  a  campaign  directly  southward  toward  Jackson,  the 
capital  of  Mississippi,  and  sent  Sherman,  with  an  ex 
pedition  from  Memphis,  down  the  river  to  the  mouth 
of  the  Yazoo,  hoping  to  unite  these  forces  against 
Vicksburg.  But  before  Grant  reached  Grenada  his 
railroad  communications  were  cut  by  a  Confederate 
raid,  and  his  great  depot  of  supplies  at  Holly  Springs 
captured  and  burned,  leaving  him  for  two  weeks  with 
out  other  provisions  than  such  as  he  could  gather  by 
foraging.  The  costly  lesson  proved  a  valuable  experi 
ence  to  him,  which  he  soon  put  to  use.  Sherman's  ex 
pedition  also  met  disaster.  Landing  at  Milliken's  Bend, 


382  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

on  the  west  bank  of  the  Mississippi,  he  ventured  a 
daring  storming  assault  from  the  east  bank  of  the 
Yazoo  at  Raines's  Bluff,  ten  miles  north  of  Vicksburg, 
but  met  a  bloody  repulse. 

Having  abandoned  his  railroad  advance,  Grant  next 
joined  Sherman  at  Milliken's  Bend  in  January,  1863, 
where  also  Admiral  Porter,  with  a  river  squadron  of 
seventy  vessels,  eleven  of  them  ironclads,  was  added 
to  his  force.  For  the  next  three  months  Grant  kept 
his  large  army  and  flotilla  busy  with  four  different  ex 
periments  to  gain  a  practicable  advance  toward  Vicks- 
burg,  until  his  fifth  highly  novel  and,  to  other  minds, 
seemingly  reckless  and  impossible  plan  secured  him  a 
brilliant  success  and  results  of  immense  military  advan 
tage.  One  experiment  was  to  cut  a  canal  across  the 
tongue  of  land  opposite  Vicksburg,  through  which  the 
flotilla  might  pass  out  of  range  of  the  Vicksburg  guns. 
A  second  was  to  force  the  gunboats  and  transports  up 
the  tortuous  and  swampy  Yazoo  to  find  a  landing  far 
north  of  Haines's  Bluff.  A  third  was  for  the  flotilla  to 
enter  through  Yazoo  Pass  and  Cold  Water  River,  two 
hundred  miles  above,  and  descend  the  Yazoo  to  a  hoped- 
for  landing.  Still  a  fourth  project  was  to  cut  a  canal 
into  Lake  Providence  west  of  the  Mississippi,  seventy 
miles  above,  find  a  practicable  waterway  through  two 
hundred  miles  of  bayous  and  rivers,  and  establish  com 
munication  with  Banks  and  Farragut,  who  were  en 
gaged  in  an  effort  to  capture  Port  Hudson. 

The  time,  the  patience,  the  infinite  labor,  and  enor 
mous  expense  of  these  several  projects  were  utterly 
wasted.  Early  in  April,  Grant  began  an  entirely  new 
plan,  which  was  opposed  by  all  his  ablest  generals,  and, 
tested  by  the  accepted  rules  of  military  science,  looked 
like  a  headlong  venture  of  rash  desperation.  During 
the  month  of  April  he  caused  Admiral  Porter  to  prepare 


VICKSBURG  383 

fifteen  or  twenty  vessels — ironclads,  steam  transports, 
and  provision  barges — and  run  them  boldly  by  night 
past  the  Vicksburg  and,  later,  past  the  Grand  Gulf  bat 
teries,  which  the  admiral  happily  accomplished  with 
very  little  loss.  Meanwhile,  the  general,  by  a  very  cir 
cuitous  route  of  seventy  miles,  marched  an  army  of 
thirty-five  thousand  down  the  \vest  bank  of  the  Missis 
sippi,  and,  with  Porter's  vessels  and  transports,  crossed 
them  to  the  east  side  of  the  river  at  Bruinsburg.  From 
this  point,  with  an  improvised  train  of  country  vehicles 
to  carry  his  ammunition,  and  living  meanwhile  entirely 
upon  the  country,  as  he  had  learned  to  do  in  his  baffled 
Grenada  expedition,  he  made  one  of  the  most  rapid  and 
brilliant  campaigns  in  military  history.  In  the  first 
twenty  days  of  May  he  marched  one  hundred  and 
eighty  miles,  and  fought  five  winning  battles — respec 
tively  Port  Gibson,  Raymond,  Jackson,  Champion's 
Hill,  and  Big  Black  River — in  each  of  which  he  brought 
his  practically  united  force  against  the  enemy's  sepa 
rated  detachments,  capturing  altogether  eighty-eight 
guns  and  over  six  thousand  prisoners,  and  shutting  up 
the  Confederate  General  Pemberton  in  Vicksburg.  By 
a  rigorous  siege  of  six  weeks  he  then  compelled  his  an 
tagonist  to  surrender  the  strongly  fortified  city  with 
one  hundred  and  seventy-two  cannon,  and  his  army  of 
nearly  thirty  thousand  men.  On  the  fourth  of  July, 
1863,  the  day  after  Meade's  crushing  defeat  of  Lee  at 
Gettysburg,  the  surrender  took  place,  citizens  and  Con 
federate  soldiers  doubtless  rejoicing  that  the  old  na 
tional  holiday  gave  them  escape  from  their  caves  and 
bomb-proofs,  and  full  Yankee  rations  to  still  their  long- 
endured  hunger. 

The  splendid  victory  of  Grant  brought  about  a  quick 
and  important  echo.  About  the  time  that  the  Union 
army  closed  around  Vicksburg,  General  Banks,  on  the 


384  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

lower  Mississippi,  began  a  close  investment  and  siege 
of  Port  Hudson,  which  he  pushed  with  determined 
tenacity.  When  the  rebel  garrison  heard  the  artillery 
salutes  which  were  fired  by  order  of  Banks  to  celebrate 
the  surrender  of  Vicksburg,  and  the  rebel  commander 
was  informed  of  Pemberton's  disaster,  he  also  gave  up 
the  defense,  and  on  July  9  surrendered  Port  Hudson 
with  six  thousand  prisoners  and  fifty-one  guns. 

Great  national  rejoicing  followed  this  double  success 
of  the  Union  arms  on  the  Mississippi,  which,  added  to 
Gettysburg,  formed  the  turning  tide  in  the  war  of  the 
rebellion;  and  no  one  was  more  elated  over  these 
Western  victories,  which  fully  restored  the  free  naviga 
tion  of  the  Mississippi,  than  President  Lincoln.  Like 
that  of  the  whole  country,  his  patience  had  been  severely 
tried  by  the  long  and  ineffectual  experiments  of  Grant. 
But  from  first  to  last  Mr.  Lincoln  had  given  him  firm 
and  undeviating  confidence  and  support.  He  not  only 
gave  the  general  quick  promotion,  but  crowned  the 
official  reward  with  the  following  generous  letter : 

"My  DEAR  GENERAL  :  I  do  not  remember  that  you 
and  I  ever  met  personally.  I  write  this  now  as  a 
grateful  acknowledgment  for  the  almost  inestimable 
service  you  have  done  the  country.  I  wish  to  say  a 
word  further.  When  you  first  reached  the  vicinity  of 
Vicksburg,  I  thought  you  should  do  what  you  finally 
did — march  the  troops  across  the  neck,  run  the  bat 
teries  with  the  transports,  and  thus  go  below ;  and  I 
never  had  any  faith,  except  a  general  hope  that  you 
knew  better  than  I,  that  the  Yazoo  Pass  expedition 
and  the  like  could  succeed.  When  you  got  below  and 
took  Port  Gibson,  Grand  Gulf,  and  vicinity,  I  thought 
you  should  go  down  the  river  and  join  General  Banks, 
and  when  you  turned  northward,  east  of  the  Big  Black, 
I  feared  it  was  a  mistake.  I  now  wish  to  make  the 


MARCH  TO   CHATTANOOGA          385 

personal  acknowledgment  that  you  were  right  and  I 
was  wrong." 

It  has  already  been  mentioned  that  General  Rose- 
crans,  after  winning  the  battle  of  Murfreesboro  at  the 
beginning  of  1863,  remained  inactive  at  that  place 
nearly  six  months,  though,  of  course,  constantly  busy 
recruiting  his  army,  gathering  supplies,  and  warding 
off  several  troublesome  Confederate  cavalry  raids. 
The  defeated  General  Bragg  retreated  only  to  Shelby- 
ville,  ten  miles  south  of  the  battle-field  he  had  been 
obliged  to  give  up,  and  the  military  frontier  thus 
divided  Tennessee  between  the  contestants.  Against 
repeated  prompting  and  urging  from  Washington, 
Rosecrans  continued  to  find  real  or  imaginary  excuses 
for  delay  until  midsummer,  when,  as  if  suddenly  awak 
ing  from  a  long  lethargy,  he  made  a  bold  advance  and, 
by  a  nine  days'  campaign  of  skilful  strategy,  forced 
Bragg  into  a  retreat  that  stopped  only  at  Chattanooga, 
south  of  the  Tennessee  River,  which,  with  the  sur 
rounding  mountains,  made  it  the  strategical  center  and 
military  key  to  the  heart  of  Georgia  and  the  South. 
This  march  of  Rosecrans,  ending  the  day  before  the 
Vicksburg  surrender,  again  gave  the  Union  forces  full 
possession  of  middle  Tennessee  down  to  its  southern 
boundary. 

The  march  completed,  and  the  enemy  thus  success 
fully  manceuvered  out  of  the  State,  Rosecrans  once 
more  came  to  a  halt,  and  made  no  further  movement 
for  six  weeks.  The  President  and  General  Halleck 
were  already  out  of  patience  with  Rosecrans  for  his 
long  previous  delay.  Bragg's  retreat  to  Chattanooga 
was  such  a  gratifying  and  encouraging  supplement  to 
the  victories  of  Vicksburg  and  Port  Hudson,  that  they 
felt  the  Confederate  army  should  not  be  allowed  to  rest, 
recruit,  and  fortify  the  important  gateway  to  the  heart 

25 


386  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

of  the  Southern  Confederacy,  and  early  in  August 
sent  Rosecrans  peremptory  orders  to  advance.  This 
direction  seemed  the  more  opportune  and  necessary, 
since  Burnside  had  organized  a  special  Union  force  in 
eastern  Kentucky,  and  was  about  starting  on  a  direct 
campaign  into  East  Tennessee. 

Finally,  obeying  this  explicit  injunction,  Rosecrans 
took  the  initiative  in  the  middle  of  August  by  a  vigor 
ous  southward  movement.  Threatening  Chattanooga 
from  the  north,  he  marched  instead  around  the  left 
flank  of  Bragg's  army,  boldly  crossing  the  Cumberland 
Mountains,  the  Tennessee  River,  and  two  mountain 
ranges  beyond.  Bragg,  seriously  alarmed  lest  Rose 
crans  should  seize  the  railroad  communications  behind 
him,  hastily  evacuated  Chattanooga,  but  not  with  the 
intention  of  flight,  as  Rosecrans  erroneously  believed 
and  reported.  When,  on  September  9,  the  left  of  Rose- 
crans's  army  marched  into  Chattanooga  without  firing 
a  shot,  the  Union  detachments  were  so  widely  scattered 
in  separating  mountain  valleys,  in  pursuit  of  Bragg's 
imaginary  retreat,  that  Bragg  believed  he  saw  his 
chance  to  crush  them  in  detail  before  they  could  unite. 

With  this  resolve,  Bragg  turned  upon  his  antago 
nist,  but  his  effort  at  quick  concentration  was  delayed 
by  the  natural  difficulties  of  the  ground.  By  Septem 
ber  19,  both  armies  were  well  gathered  on  opposite 
sides  of  Chickamauga  Creek,  eight  miles  southeast  of 
Chattanooga;  each  commander  being  as  yet,  however, 
little  informed  of  the  other's  position  and  strength. 
Bragg  had  over  seventy-one  thousand  men ;  Rosecrans, 
fifty-seven  thousand.  The  conflict  was  finally  begun, 
rather  by  accident  than  design,  and  on  that  day  and  the 
twentieth  was  fought  the  battle  of  Chickamauga,  one  of 
the  severest  encounters  of  the  whole  war.  Developing 
itself  without  clear  knowledge  on  either  side,  it  became 


CHICKAMAUGA  387 

a  moving  conflict,  Bragg  constantly  extending  his  at 
tack  toward  his  right,  and  Rosecrans  meeting  the  onset 
with  prompt  shifting  toward  his  left. 

In  this  changing  contest  Rosecrans's  army  underwent 
an  alarming  crisis  on  the  second  day  of  the  battle.  A 
mistake  or  miscarriage  of  orders  opened  a  gap  of  two 
brigades  in  his  line,  which  the  enemy  quickly  found, 
and  through  which  the  Confederate  battalions  rushed 
with  an  energy  that  swept  away  the  whole  Union  right 
in  a  disorderly  retreat.  Rosecrans  himself  was  caught 
in  the  panic,  and,  believing  the  day  irretrievably  lost, 
hastened  back  to  Chattanooga  to  report  the  disaster 
and  collect  what  he  might  of  his  flying  army.  The 
hopeless  prospect,  however,  soon  changed.  Gen 
eral  Thomas,  second  in  command,  and  originally  in 
charge  of  the  center,  had  been  sent  by  Rosecrans  to  the 
extreme  left,  and  had,'  while  the  right  was  giving  way, 
successfully  repulsed  the  enemy  in  his  front.  He  had 
been  so  fortunate  as  to  secure  a  strong  position  on  the 
head  of  a  ridge,  around  which  he  gathered  such  rem 
nants  of  the  beaten  detachments  as  he  could  collect, 
amounting  to  about  half  the  Union  army,  and  here, 
from  two  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  until  dark,  he  held 
his  semicircular  line  against  repeated  assaults  of  the 
enemy,  with  a  heroic  valor  that  earned  him  the  sobri 
quet  of  "The  Rock  of  Chickamauga."  At  night, 
Thomas  retired,  under  orders,  to  Rossville,  half  way  to 
Chattanooga. 

The  President  was  of  course  greatly  disappointed 
when  Rosecrans  telegraphed  that  he  had  met  a  seri 
ous  disaster,  but  this  disappointment  was  mitigated 
by  the  quickly  following  news  of  the  magnificent  de 
fense,  and  the  successful  stand  made  by  General 
Thomas  at  the  close  of  the  battle.  Mr.  Lincoln  imme 
diately  wrote  in  a  note  to  Halleck : 


388  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

"I  think  it  very  important  for  General  Rosecrans  to 
hold  his  position  at  or  about  Chattanooga,  because,  if 
held,  from  that  place  to  Cleveland,  both  inclusive,  it 
keeps  all  Tennessee  clear  of  the  enemy,  and  also  breaks 
one  of  his  most  important  railroad  lines. 
If  he  can  only  maintain  this  position,  without  more,  this 
rebellion  can  only  eke  out  a  short  and  feeble  existence, 
as  an  animal  sometimes  may  with  a  thorn  in  its  vitals." 

And  to  Rosecrans  he  telegraphed  directly,  bidding 
him  be  of  good  cheer,  and  adding :  "We  shall  do  our 
utmost  to  assist  you."  To  this  end  the  administration 
took  instant  and  energetic  measures.  On  the  night 
of  September  23,  the  President,  General  Halleck,  sev 
eral  members  of  the  cabinet,  and  leading  army  and  rail 
road  officials  met  in  an  improvised  council  at  the  War 
Department,  and  issued  emergency  orders  under  which 
two  army  corps  from  the  Army 'of  the  Potomac,  num 
bering  twenty  thousand  men  in  all,  with  their  arms 
and  equipments  ready  for  the  field,  the  whole  under 
command  of  General  Hooker,  were  transported  from 
their  camps  on  the  Rapidan  by  railway  to  Nashville  and 
the  Tennessee  River  in  the  next  eight  days.  Burnside, 
who  had  arrived  at  Knoxville  early  in  September,  was 
urged  by  repeated  messages  to  join  Rosecrans,  and 
other  reinforcements  were  already  on  the  way  from 
Memphis  and  Vicksburg. 

All  this  help,  however,  was  not  instantly  available. 
Before  it  could  arrive  Rosecrans  felt  obliged  to  draw 
together  within  the  fortifications  of  Chattanooga, 
while  Bragg  quickly  closed  about  him,  and,  by  practi 
cally  blockading  Rosecrans's  river  communication, 
placed  him  in  a  state  of  siege.  In  a  few  weeks  the  lim 
ited  supplies  brought  the  Union  army  face  to  face  with 
famine.  It  having  become  evident  that  Rosecrans  was 
incapable  of  extricating  it  from  its  peril,  he  was  re- 


BATTLE   OF   CHATTANOOGA         389 

lieved  and  the  command  given  to  Thomas,  while  the 
three  western  departments  were  consolidated  under 
General  Grant,  and  he  was  ordered  personally  to  pro 
ceed  to  Chattanooga,  which  place  he  reached  on  Oc 
tober  22. 

Before  his  arrival,  General  W.  F.  Smith  had  devised 
and  prepared  an  ingenious  plan  to  regain  control  of 
river  communication.  Under  the  orders  of  Grant, 
Smith  successfully  executed  it,  and  full  rations  soon 
restored  vigor  and  confidence  to  the  Union  troops. 
The  considerable  reinforcements  under  Hooker  and 
Sherman  coming  up,  put  the  besieging  enemy  on  the 
defensive,  and  active  preparations  were  begun,  which 
resulted  in  the  famous  battle  and  overwhelming  Union 
victory  of  Chattanooga  on  November  23,  24,  and  25, 

1863. 

The  city  of  Chattanooga  lies  on  the  southeastern 
bank  of  the  Tennessee  River.  Back  of  the  city,  Chat 
tanooga  valley  forms  a  level  plain  about  two  miles  in 
width  to  Missionary  Ridge,  a  narrow  mountain  range 
five  hundred  feet  high,  generally  parallel  to  the  course 
of  the  Tennessee,  extending  far  to  the  southwest.  The 
Confederates  had  fortified  the  upper  end  of  Missionary 
Ridge  to  a  length  of  five  to  seven  miles  opposite  the 
city,  lining  its  long  crest  with  about  thirty  guns,  am 
ply  supported  by  infantry.  This  formidable  barrier 
was  still  further  strengthened  by  two  lines  of  rifle-pits, 
one  at  the  base  of  Missionary  Ridge  next  to  the  city, 
and  another  with  advanced  pickets  still  nearer  Chat 
tanooga.  Northward,  the  enemy  strongly  held  the 
end  of  Missionary  Ridge  where  the  railroad  tunnel 
passes  through  it;  southward,  they  held  the  yet 
stronger  point  of  Lookout  Mountain,  whose  rocky  base 
turns  the  course  of  the  Tennessee  River  in  a  short  bend 
to  the  north. 


390  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Grant's  plan  in  rough  outline  was,  that  Sherman, 
with  the  Army  of  the  Tennessee,  should  storm  the 
northern  end  of  Missionary  Ridge  at  the  railroad  tun 
nel  ;  Hooker,  stationed  at  Wauhatchie,  thirteen  miles 
to  the  southwest  with  his  two  corps  from  the  Army 
of  the  Potomac,  should  advance  toward  the  city, 
storming  the  point  of  Lookout  Mountain  on  his  way; 
and  Thomas,  in  the  city,  attack  the  direct  front  of 
Missionary  Ridge.  The  actual  beginning  slightly  va 
ried  this  program,  with  a  change  of  corps  and  divisions, 
but  the  detail  is  not  worth  noting. 

Beginning  on  the  night  of  November  23,  Sherman 
crossed  his  command  over  the  Tennessee,  and  on  the 
afternoon  of  the  twenty-fourth  gained  the  northern 
end  of  Missionary  Ridge,  driving  the  enemy  before 
him  as  far  as  the  railroad  tunnel.  Here,  however,  he 
found  a  deep  gap  in  the  ridge,  previously  unknown  to 
him,  which  barred  his  further  progress.  That  same 
afternoon  Hooker's  troops  worked  their  \vay  through 
mist  and  fog  up  the  rugged  sides  of  Lookout  Mountain, 
winning  the  brilliant  success  which  has  become  famous 
as  the  "battle  above  the  clouds."  That  same  afternoon, 
also,  two  divisions  of  the  center,  under  the  eyes  of 
Grant  and  Thomas,  pushed  forward  the  Union  line 
about  a  mile,  seizing  and  fortifying  a  hill  called  Or 
chard  Knob,  capturing  Bragg's  first  line  of  rifle-pits 
and  several  hundred  prisoners. 

So  far,  everything  had  occurred  to  inspirit  the  Union 
troops  and  discourage  the  enemy.  But  the  main  in 
cident  was  yet  to  come,  on  the  afternoon  of  November 
25.  All  the  forenoon  of  that  day  Grant  waited  eagerly 
to  see  Sherman  making  progress  along  the  north  end 
of  Missionary  Ridge,  not  knowing  that  he  had  met 
an  impassable  valley.  Grant's  patience  was  equally 
tried  at  hearing  no  news  from  Hooker,  though  that 


BATTLE   OF   CHATTANOOGA         391 

general  had  successfully  reached  Missionary  Ridge, 
and  was  ascending  the  gap  near  Rossville. 

At  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  Grant  at  length 
gave  Thomas  the  order  to  advance.  Eleven  Union 
brigades  rushed  forward  with  orders  to  take  the  en 
emy's  rifle-pits  at  the  base  of  Missionary  Ridge,  and 
then  halt  to  re-form.  But  such  was  the  ease  of  this 
first  capture,  such  the  eagerness  of  the  men  who  had 
been  waiting  all  day  for  the  moment  of  action,  that, 
after  but  a  slight  pause,  without  orders,  and  moved 
by  a  common  impulse,  they  swept  on  and  up  the  steep 
and  rocky  face  of  Missionary  Ridge,  heedless  of  the 
enemy's  fire  from  rifle  and  cannon  at  the  top,  until  in 
fifty-five  minutes  after  leaving  their  positions  they 
almost  simultaneously  broke  over  the  crest  of  the  ridge 
in  six  different  places,  capturing  the  batteries  and  mak 
ing  prisoners  of  the  supporting  infantry,  who,  sur 
prised  and  bewildered  by  the  daring  escalade,  made 
little  or  no  further  resistance.  Bragg's  official  report 
soundly  berates  the  conduct  of  his  men,  apparently  for 
getting  the  heavy  loss  they  had  inflicted  on  their  as 
sailants,  but  regardless  of  which  the  Union  veterans 
mounted  to  victory  in  an  almost  miraculous  exaltation 
of  patriotic  heroism. 

Bragg's  Confederate  army  was  not  only  beaten,  but 
hopelessly  demoralized  by  the  fiery  Union  assault,  and 
fled  in  panic  and  retreat.  Grant  kept  up  a  vigorous 
pursuit  to  a  distance  of  twenty  miles,  which  he  ceased 
in  order  to  send  an  immediate  strong  reinforcement 
under  Sherman  to  relieve  Burnside,  besieged  by  the 
Confederate  General  Longstreet  at  Knoxville.  But 
before  this  help  arrived,  Burnside  had  repulsed  Long- 
street,  who,  promptly  informed  of  the  Chattanooga 
disaster,  retreated  in  the  direction  of  Virginia.  Not 
being  pursued,  however,  this  general  again  wintered 


392  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

in  East  Tennessee ;  and  for  the  same  reason,  the  beaten 
army  of  Bragg  halted  in  its  retreat  from  Missionary 
Ridge  at  Dalton,  where  it  also  went  into  winter  quar 
ters.  The  battle  of  Chattanooga  had  opened  the  great 
central  gateway  to  the  south,  but  the  rebel  army,  still 
determined  and  formidable,  yet  lay  in  its  path,  only 
twenty-eight  miles  away. 


XXVIII 

Grant  Lieutenant-General — Interview  with  Lincoln — 
Grant  Visits  Sherman — Plan  of  Campaigns — Lincoln 
to  Grant — From  the  Wilderness  to  Cold  Harbor — The 
Move  to  City  Point — Siege  of  Petersburg — Early  Men 
aces  Washington — Lincoln  under  Fire — Sheridan  in 
the  Shenandoah  Valley 

THE  army  rank  of  lieutenant-general  had,  before 
the  Civil  War,  been  conferred  only  twice  on 
American  commanders;  on  Washington,  for  service 
in  the  War  of  Independence,  and  on  Scott,  for  his  con 
quest  of  Mexico.  As  a  reward  for  the  victories  of 
Donelson,  Vicksburg,  and  Chattanooga,  Congress 
passed,  and  the  President  signed  in  February,  1864,  an 
act  to  revive  that  grade.  Calling  Grant  to  Washington, 
the  President  met  him  for  the  first  time  at  a  public  re 
ception  at  the  Executive  Mansion  on  March  8,  when 
the  famous  general  was  received  with  all  the  manifesta 
tions  of  interest  and  enthusiasm  possible  in  a  social 
state  ceremonial.  On  the  following  day,  at  one  o'clock, 
the  general's  formal  investiture  with  his  new  rank  and 
authority  took  place  in  the  presence  of  Mr.  Lincoln, 
the  cabinet,  and  a  few  other  officials. 

"General  Grant,"  said  the  President,  "the  nation's 
appreciation  of  what  you  have  done,  and  its  reliance 
upon  you  for  what  remains  to  do  in  the  existing  great 
struggle,  are  now  presented,  with  this  commission  con 
stituting  you  Lieutenant-General  in  the  Army  of  the 
United  States.  With  this  high  honor  devolves  upon 

393 


394  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

you,  also,  a  corresponding  responsibility.  As  the  coun 
try  herein  trusts  you,  so,  under  God,  it  will  sustain  you. 
I  scarcely  need  to  add  that  with  what  I  here  speak  for 
the  nation,  goes  my  own  hearty  personal  concurrence." 

General  Grant's  reply  was  modest  and  also  very 
brief : 

"Mr.  President,  I  accept  this  commission  with  grati 
tude  for  the  high  honor  conferred.  With  the  aid  of  the 
noble  armies  that  have  fought  on  so  many  fields  for  our 
common  country,  it  will  be  my  earnest  endeavor  not 
to  disappoint  your  expectations.  I  feel  the  full  weight 
of  the  responsibilities  now  devolving  on  me;  and 
I  know  that  if  they  are  met,  it  will  be  due  to  those 
armies,  and  above  all  to  the  favor  of  that  Providence 
which  leads  both  nations  and  men." 
•  In  the  informal  conversation  which  followed,  Gen 
eral  Grant  inquired  what  special  service  was  expected 
of  him ;  to  which  the  President  replied  that  the  country 
wanted  him  to  take  Richmond;  and  being  asked  if  he 
could  do  so,  replied  that  he  could  if  he  had  the  troops, 
which  he  was  assured  would  be  furnished  him.  On 
the  following  day,  Grant  went  to  the  Army  of  the  Po 
tomac,  where  Meade  received  him  with  frank  courtesy, 
generously  suggesting  that  he  was  ready  to  yield  the 
command  to  any  one  Grant  might  prefer.  Grant,  how 
ever,  informed  Meade  that  he  desired  to  make  no 
change;  and,  returning  to  Washington,  started  west 
without  a  moment's  loss  of  time.  On  March  12,  1864, 
formal  orders  of  the  War  Department  placed  Grant 
in  command  of  all  the  armies  of  the  United  States, 
while  Halleck,  relieved  from  that  duty,  was  retained 
at  Washington  as  the  President's  chief  of  staff. 

Grant  frankly  confesses  in  his  "Memoirs"  that  when 
he  started  east  it  was  with  a  firm  determination  to 
accept  no  appointment  requiring  him  to  leave  the  West ; 


PLAN  OF  CAMPAIGNS  395 

but  "when  I  got  to  Washington  and  saw  the  situation, 
it  was  plain  that  here  was  the  point  for  the  command 
ing  general  to  be."  His  short  visit  had  removed  sev 
eral  false  impressions,  and  future  experience  was  to 
cure  him  of  many  more. 

When  Grant  again  met  Sherman  in  the  West,  he  out 
lined  to  that  general,  who  had  become  his  most  intimate 
and  trusted  brother  officer,  the  very  simple  and  definite 
military  policy  which  was  to  be  followed  during  the  year 
1864.  There  were  to  be  but  two  leading  campaigns. 
Sherman,  starting  from  Chattanooga,  full  master  of  his 
own  movements,  was  to  lead  the  combined  western 
forces  against  the  Confederate  army  under  Johnston,' 
the  successor  of  Bragg.  Grant  would  personally  con 
duct  the  campaign  in  the  East  against  Richmond,  or 
rather  against  the  rebel  army  under  Lee.  Meade  would 
be  left  in  immediate  command  of  the  Army  of  the  Po 
tomac,  to  execute  the  personal  daily  directions  of  Grant. 
The  t\vo  Confederate  armies  were  eight  hundred  miles 
apart,  and  should  either  give  way,  it  was  to  be  followed 
without  halt  or  delay  to  battle  or  surrender,  to  prevent 
its  junction  with  the  other.  Scattered  as  a  large  por 
tion  of  the  Union  forces  were  in  garrisons  and  detach 
ments  at  widely  separated  points,  there  were,  of  course, 
many  details  to  be  arranged,  and  a  few  expeditions 
already  in  progress;  but  these  were  of  minor  impor 
tance,  and  for  contributory,  rather  than  main  objects, 
and  need  not  here  be  described. 

Returning  promptly  to  Washington,  Grant  estab 
lished  his  headquarters  with  the  Army  of  the  Potomac, 
at  Culpepper,  and  for  about  a  month  actively  pushed 
his  military  preparations.  He  seems  at  first  to  have 
been  impressed  with  a  dread  that  the  President  might 
wish  to  influence  or  control  his  plans.  But  the  few  in 
terviews  betwreen  them  removed  the  suspicion  which 


396  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

reckless  newspaper  accusation  had  raised ;  and  all  doubt 
on  this  point  vanished,  when,  on  the  last  day  of  April, 
Mr.  Lincoln  sent  him  the  following  explicit  letter : 

"Not  expecting  to  see  you  again  before  the  spring 
campaign  opens,  I  wish  to  express  in  this  way  my  en 
tire  satisfaction  with  what  you  have  done  up  to  this 
time,  so  far  as  I  understand  it.  The  particulars  of 
your  plan  I  neither  know  nor  seek  to  know.  You  are 
vigilant  and  self-reliant ;  and,  pleased  with  this,  I  wish 
not  to  obtrude  any  constraints  or  restraints  upon  you. 
While  I  am  very  anxious  that  any  great  disaster  or 
capture  of  our  men  in  great  numbers  shall  be  avoided, 
'I  know  these  points  are  less  likely  to  escape  your  atten 
tion  than  they  would  be  mine.  If  there  is  anything 
wanting  which  is  within  my  power  to  give,  do  not 
fail  to  let  me  know  it.  And  now,  with  a  brave  army 
and  a  just  cause,  may  God  sustain  you." 

Grant's  immediate  reply  confessed  the  groundless 
ness  of  his  apprehensions : 

"From  my  first  entrance  into  the  volunteer  service  of 
the  country  to  the  present  day,  I  have  never  had  cause 
of  complaint — have  never  expressed  or  implied  a  com 
plaint  against  the  administration,  or  the  Secretary  of 
War,  for  throwing  any  embarrassment  in  the  way  of 
my  vigorously  prosecuting  what  appeared  to  me  my 
duty.  Indeed,  since  the  promotion  which  placed  me  in 
command  of  all  the  armies,  and  in  view  of  the  great 
responsibility  and  importance  of  success,  I  have  been 
astonished  at  the  readiness  with  which  everything 
asked  for  has  been  yielded,  without  even  an  explanation 
being  asked.  Should  my  success  be  less  than  I  desire 
and  expect,  the  least  I  can  say  is,  the  fault  is  not  with 
you." 

The  Union  army  under  Grant,  one  hundred  and 
twenty-two  thousand  strong,  on  April  30,  was  en- 


THE   OPPOSING   ARMIES  397 

camped  north  of  the  Rapidan  River.  The  Confederate 
army  under  Lee,  numbering  sixty-two  thousand,  lay 
south  of  that  stream.  Nearly  three  years  before,  these 
opposing  armies  had  fought  their  first  battle  of  Bull 
Run,  only  a  comparatively  short  distance  north  of 
where  they  now  confronted  each  other.  Campaign  and 
battle  between  them  had  surged  far  to  the  north  and  to 
the  south,  but  neither  could  as  yet  claim  over  the  other 
any  considerable  gain  of  ground  or  of  final  advantage 
in  the  conflict.  Broadly  speaking,  relative  advance  and 
retreat,  as  well  as  relative  loss  and  gain  of  battle-fields 
substantially  balanced  each  other.  Severe  as  had  been 
their  struggles  in  the  past,  a  more  arduous  trial  of 
strength  was  before  them.  Grant  had  two  to  one  in 
numbers;  Lee  the  advantage  of  a  defensive  campaign. 
He  could  retire  toward  cumulative  reserves,  and  into 
prepared  fortifications;  knew  almost  by  heart  every 
road,  hill,  and  forest  of  Virginia;  had  for  his  friendly 
scout  every  white  inhabitant.  Perhaps  his  greatest 
element  of  strength  lay  in  the  conscious  pride  of  the 
Confederate  army  that  through  all  fluctuations  of  suc 
cess  and  failure,  it  had  for  three  years  effectually 
barred  the  way  of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  to  Rich 
mond.  But  to  offset  this  there  now  menaced  it  what 
was  before  absent  in  every  encounter,  the  grim,  un 
flinching  will  of  the  new  Union  commander. 

General  Grant  devised  no  plan  of  complicated  strat 
egy  for  the  problem  before  him,  but  proposed  to  solve 
it  by  plain,  hard,  persistent  fighting.  He  would  en 
deavor  to  crush  the  army  of  Lee  before  it  could  reach 
Richmond  or  unite  with  the  army  of  Johnston ;  or,  fail 
ing  in  that,  he  would  shut  it  up  in  that  stronghold  and 
reduce  it  by  a  siege.  With  this  in  view,  he  instructed 
Meade  at  the  very  outset :  "Lee's  army  will  be  your 
objective  point.  Where  Lee  goes,  there  you  will  go, 


398  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

also."  Everything  being  ready,  on  the  night  of  May  4, 
Meade  threw  five  bridges  across  the  Rapidan,  and  be 
fore  the  following  night  the  whole  Union  army,  with 
its  trains,  was  across  the  stream  moving  southward 
by  the  left  flank,  past  the  right  flank  of  the  Confed 
erates. 

Sudden  as  was  the  advance,  it  did  not  escape  the  vig 
ilant  observation  of  Lee,  who  instantly  threw  his  force 
against  the  flanks  of  the  Union  columns,  and  for  two 
days  there  raged  in  that  difficult,  broken,  and  tangled 
region  known  as  the  Wilderness,  a  furious  battle  of 
detachments  along  a  line  five  miles  in  length.  Thick 
ets,  swamps,  and  ravines,  rendered  intelligent  direction 
and  concerted  manceuvering  impossible,  and  furious 
and  bloody  as  was  the  conflict,  its  results  were  inde 
cisive.  No  enemy  appearing  on  the  seventh,  Grant 
boldly  started  to  Spottsylvania  Court  House,  only,  how 
ever,  to  find  the  Confederates  ahead  of  him;  and  on 
the  eighth  and  ninth  these  turned  their  position,  al 
ready  strong  by  nature,  into  an  impregnable  intrenched 
camp.  Grant  assaulted  their  works  on  the  tenth, 
fiercely,  but  unsuccessfully.  There  followed  one  day 
of  inactivity,  during  which  Grant  wrote  his  report, 
only  claiming  that  after  six  days  of  hard  fighting  and 
heavy  losses  "the  result  up  to  this  time  is  much  in  our 
favor" ;  but  expressing,  in  the  phrase  which  immedi 
ately  became  celebrated,  his  firm  resolution  to  "fight 
it  out  on  this  line  if  it  takes  all  summer." 

On  May  12,  1864,  Grant  ordered  a  yet  more  deter 
mined  attack,  in  which,  with  fearful  carnage  on  both 
sides,  the  Union  forces  finally  stormed  the  earthworks 
which  have  become  known  as  the  "bloody  angle."  But 
finding  that  other  and  more  formidable  intrenchments 
still  resisted  his  entrance  to  the  Confederate  camp, 
Grant  once  more  moved  by  the  left  flank  past  his  enemy 


COLD   HARBOR  399 

toward  Richmond.  Lee  followed  with  equal  swiftness 
along  the  interior  lines.  Days  passed  in  an  intermit 
ting,  and  about  equally  matched  contest  of  strategy  and 
fighting.  The  difference  was  that  Grant  was  always 
advancing  and  Lee  always  retiring.  On  May  26,  Grant 
reported  to  Washington : 

"Lee's  army  is  really  whipped.  The  prisoners  we 
now  take  show  it,  and  the  action  of  his  army  shows  it 
unmistakably.  A  battle  with  them  outside  of  intrench- 
ments  cannot  be  had.  Our  men  feel  that  they  have 
gained  the  morale  over  the  enemy,  and  attack  him  with 
confidence.  I  may  be  mistaken,  but  I  feel  that  our 
success  over  Lee's  army  is  already  assured." 

That  same  night,  Grant's  advance  crossed  the  Pamun- 
key  River  at  Hanover  Town,  and  during  another  week, 
with  a  succession  of  marching,  flanking,  and  fighting, 
Grant  pushed  the  Union  army  forward  to  Cold  Harbor. 
Here  Lee's  intrenched  army  was  again  between  him 
and  Richmond,  and  on  June  3,  Grant  ordered  another 
determined  attack  in  front,  to  break  through  that  con 
stantly  resisting  barrier.  But  a  disastrous  repulse  was 
the  consequence.  Its  effect  upon  the  campaign  is  best 
given  in  Grant's  own  letter,  written  to  Washington  on 
June  5 : 

"My  idea  from  the  start  has  been  to  beat  Lee's  army, 
if  possible,  north  of  Richmond;  then,  after  destroying 
his  lines  of  communication  on  the  north  side  of  the 
James  River,  to  transfer  the  army  to  the  south  side  and 
besiege  Lee  in  Richmond,  or  follow  him  south  if  he 
should  retreat.  I  now  find,  after  over  thirty  days  of 
trial,  the  enemy  deems  it  of  the  first  importance  to  run 
no  risks  with  the  armies  they  now  have.  They  act 
purely  on  the  defensive  behind  breastworks,  or  fee 
bly  on  the  offensive  immediately  in  front  of  them,  and 
wrhere,  in  case  of  repulse,  they  can  instantly  retire  be- 


400  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

hind  them.  Without  a  greater  sacrifice  of  human  life 
than  I  am  willing  to  make,  all  cannot  be  accomplished 
that  I  had  designed  outside  of  the  city." 

During  the  week  succeeding  the  severe  repulse  at 
Cold  Harbor,  which  closed  what  may  be  summed  up 
as  Grant's  campaign  against  Richmond,  he  made  his 
preparations  to  enter  upon  the  second  element  of  his 
general  plan,  which  may  be  most  distinctively  denom 
inated  the  siege  of  Petersburg,  though,  in  fuller  phrase 
ology,  it  might  be  called  the  siege  of  Petersburg  and 
Richmond  combined.  But  the  amplification  is  not 
essential ;  for  though  the  operation  and  the  siege- works 
embraced  both  cities,  Petersburg  was  the  vital  and  vul 
nerable  point.  When  Petersburg  fell,  Richmond  fell 
of  necessity.  The  reason  was,  that  Lee's  army,  in 
closed  within  the  combined  fortifications,  could  only  be 
fed  by  the  use  of  three  railroads  centering  at  Peters 
burg;  one  from  the  southeast,  one  from  the  south,  and 
one  with  general  access  from  the  southwest.  Between 
these,  two  plank  roads  added  a  partial  means  of  supply. 
Thus  far,  Grant's  active  campaign,  though  failing  to 
destroy  Lee's  army,  had  nevertheless  driven  it  into 
Richmond,  and  obviously  his  next  step  was  either  to 
dislodge  it,  or  compel  it  to  surrender. 

Cold  Harbor  was  about  ten  miles  from  Richmond, 
and  that  city  was  inclosed  on  the  Washington  side  by 
two  circles  of  fortifications  devised  with  the  best  en 
gineering  skill.  On  June  13,  Grant  threw  forward  an 
army  corps  across  the  Chickahominy,  deceiving  Lee  into 
the  belief  that  he  was  making  a  real  direct  advance 
upon  the  city;  and  so  skilfully  concealed  his  intention 
that  by  midnight  of  the  sixteenth  he  had  moved  the 
whole  Union  army  with  its  artillery  and  trains  about 
twenty  miles  directly  south  and  across  the  James  River, 
on  a  pontoon  bridge  over  two  thousand  feet  long,  to 


SIEGE  OF  PETERSBURG  401 

City  Point.  General  Butler,  with  an  expedition  from 
Fortress  Monroe,  moving  early  in  May,  had  been  or 
dered  to  capture  Petersburg;  and  though  he  failed  in 
this,  he  had  nevertheless  seized  and  held  City  Point, 
and  Grant  thus  effected  an  immediate  junction  with 
Butler's  force  of  thirty-two  thousand.  Butler's  second 
attempt  to  seize  Petersburg  while  Grant  was  marching 
to  join  him  also  failed,  and  Grant,  unwilling  to  make 
any  needless  sacrifice,  now  limited  his  operations  to  the 
processes  of  a  regular  siege. 

This  involved  a  complete  change  of  method.  The 
campaign  against  Richmond,  from  the  crossing  of  the 
Rapidan  and  battle  of  the  Wilderness,  to  Cold  Harbor, 
and  the  change  of  base  to  City  Point,  occupied  a 
period  of  about  six  weeks  of  almost  constant  swift 
marching  and  hard  fighting.  The  siege  of  Petersburg 
was  destined  to  involve  more  than  nine  months  of  min 
gled  engineering  and  fighting.  The  Confederate  army 
forming  the  combined  garrisons  of  Richmond  and 
Petersburg  numbered  about  seventy  thousand.  The 
army  under  Grant,  though  in  its  six  weeks'  campaign  it 
had  lost  over  sixty  thousand  in  killed,  wounded,  and 
missing,  was  again  raised  by  the  reinforcements  sent  to 
it,  and  by  its  junction  with  Butler,  to  a  total  of  about 
one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand.  With  this  superiority 
of  numbers,  Grant  pursued  the  policy  of  alternately 
threatening  the  defenses  of  Lee,  sometimes  south,  some 
times  north  of  the  James  River,  and  at  every  favorable 
opportunity  pushing  his  siege-works  westward  in  order 
to  gradually  gain  and  command  the  three  railroads  and 
two  plank  roads  that  brought  the  bulk  of  absolutely 
necessary  food  and  supplies  to  the  Confederate  armies 
and  the  inhabitants  of  Petersburg  and  Richmond.  It 
is  estimated  that  this  gradual  westward  extension  of 
Grant's  lines,  redoubts,  and  trenches,  when  added  to 

26 


402  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

those  threatening  Richmond  and  Petersburg  on  the 
east,  finally  reached  a  total  development  of  about  forty 
miles.  The  catastrophe  came  when  Lee's  army  grew 
insufficient  to  man  his  defensive  line  along  this  entire 
length,  and  Grant,  finding  the  weakened  places,  even 
tually  broke  through  it,  compelling  the  Confederate 
general  and  army  to  evacuate  and  abandon  both  cities 
and  seek  safety  in  flight. 

The  central  military  drama,  the  first  two  distinctive 
acts  of  which  are  outlined  above,  had  during  this  long 
period  a  running  accompaniment  of  constant  under 
plot  and  shifting  and  exciting  episodes.  The  Shenan- 
doah  River,  rising  northwest  of  Richmond,  but  flowing 
in  a  general  northeast  course  to  join  the  Potomac  at 
Harper's  Ferry,  gives  its  name  to  a  valley  twenty  to 
thirty  miles  wide,  highly  fertile  and  cultivated,  and 
having  throughout  its  length  a  fine  turnpike,  which  in 
ante-railroad  days  was  an  active  commercial  highway 
between  North  and  South.  Bordered  on  the  west  by 
the  rugged  Alleghany  Mountains,  and  on  the  east  by 
the  single  outlying  range  called  the  Blue  Ridge,  it 
formed  a  protected  military  lane  or  avenue,  having 
vital  relation  to  the  strategy  of  campaigns  on  the  open 
Atlantic  slopes  of  central  Virginia.  The  Shenandoah 
valley  had  thus  played  a  not  unimportant  part  in  almost 
every  military  operation  of  the  war,  from  the  first  battle 
of  Bull  Run  to  the  final  defense  of  Richmond. 

The  plans  of  General  Grant  did  not  neglect  so 
essential  a  feature  of  his  task.  While  he  was  fighting 
his  way  toward  the  Confederate  capital,  his  instructions 
contemplated  the  possession  and  occupation  of  the 
Shenandoah  valley  as  part  of  the  system  which  should 
isolate  and  eventually  besiege  Richmond.  But  this  part 
of  his  plan  underwent  many  fluctuations.  He  had 
scarcely  reached  City  Point  when  he  became  aware 


EARLY'S   RAID  403 

that  General  Lee,  equally  alive  to  the  advantages  of 
the  Shenandoah  valley,  had  dispatched  General  Early 
with  seventeen  thousand  men  on  a  flying  expedition 
up  that  convenient  natural  sally-port,  which  was  for  the 
moment  undefended. 

Early  made  such  speed  that  he  crossed  the  Poto 
mac  during  the  first  week  of  July,  made  a  devastating 
raid  through  Maryland  and  southern  Pennsylvania, 
threatened  Baltimore,  and  turning  sharply  to  the  south, 
was,  on  the  eleventh  of  the  month,  actually  at  the  out 
skirts  of  Washington  city,  meditating  its  assault  and 
capture.  Only  the  opportune  arrival  of  the  Sixth  Army 
Corps  under  General  Wright,  on  the  afternoon  of  that 
day,  sent  hurriedly  by  Grant  from  City  Point,  saved 
the  Federal  capital  from  occupation  and  perhaps  de 
struction  by  the  enemy. 

Certain  writers  have  represented  the  government  as 
panic-stricken  during  the  two  days  that  this  menace 
lasted ;  but  neither  Mr.  Lincoln,  nor  Secretary  Stanton, 
nor  General  Halleck,  whom  it  has  been  even  more  the 
fashion  to  abuse,  lacked  coolness  or  energy  in  the 
emergency.  Indeed,  the  President's  personal  uncon 
cern  was  such  as  to  give  his  associates  much  uneasiness. 
On  the  tenth,  he  rode  out  as  was  his  usual  custom  dur 
ing  the  summer  months,  to  spend  the  night  at  the 
Soldiers'  Home,  in  the  suburbs ;  but  Secretary  Stanton, 
learning  that  Early  was  advancing  in  heavy  force,  sent 
after  him  to  compel  his  return  to  the  city;  and  twice 
afterward,  intent  on  watching  the  fighting  which  took 
place  near  Fort  Stevens,  he  exposed  his  tall  form  to 
the  gaze  and  bullets  of  the  enemy  in  a  manner  to  call 
forth  earnest  remonstrance  from  those  near  him. 

The  succeeding  military  events  in  the  Shenandoah 
valley  must  here  be  summed  up  in  the  brief  statement 
that  General  Sheridan,  being  placed  in  command  of  the 


404  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Middle  Military  Division  and  given  an  army  of  thirty 
or  forty  thousand  men,  finally  drove  back  the  Con 
federate  detachments  upon  Richmond,  in  a  series  of 
brilliant  victories,  and  so  devastated  the  southern  end 
of  the  valley  as  to  render  it  untenable  for  either  army ; 
and  by  the  destruction  of  the  James  River  Canal  and 
the  Virginia  Central  Railroad,  succeeded  in  practically 
carrying  out  Grant's  intention  of  effectually  closing 
the  avenue  of  supplies  to  Richmond  from  the  northwest. 


XXIX 

Sherman's  Meridian  Expedition  —  Capture  of  Atlanta  — 
Hood  Supersedes  Johnston  —  Hood's  Invasion  of  Ten 
nessee  —  Franklin  and  Nashville  —  Sherman's  March  to 
the  Sea  —  Capture  of  Savannah  —  Sherman  to  Lincoln  — 
Lincoln  to  Sherman  —  Sherman's  March  through  the 
Carolinas  —  The  Burning  of  Charleston  and  Columbia 
—  Arrival  at  Goldsboro  —  Junction  ivith  Schofield  — 
Visit  to  Grant 


Grant  was  making  his  marches,  fighting 
his  battles,  and  carrying  on  his  siege  operations 
in  Virginia,  Sherman  in  the  West  was  performing  the 
task  assigned  to  him  by  his  chief,  to  pursue,  destroy, 
or  capture  the  principal  western  Confederate  army,  now 
commanded  by  General  Johnston.  The  forces  which 
under  Bragg  had  been  defeated  in  the  previous  autumn 
at  Lookout  Mountain  and  Missionary  Ridge,  had 
halted  as  soon  as  pursuit  ceased,  and  remained  in  win 
ter  quarters  at  and  about  Dalton,  only  twenty-eight 
or  thirty  miles  on  the  railroad  southeast  of  Chat 
tanooga,  where  their  new  commander,  Johnston,  had, 
in  the  spring  of  1864,  about  sixty-eight  thousand  men 
with  which  to  oppose  the  Union  advance. 

A  few  preliminary  campaigns  and  expeditions  in 
the  West  need  not  here  be  detailed,  as  they  were  not 
decisive.  One,  however,  led  by  Sherman  himself 
from  Vicksburg  to  Meridian,  must  be  mentioned,  since, 
during  the  month  of  February,  it  destroyed  about  one 
hundred  miles  of  the  several  railroads  centering  at  the 
latter  place,  and  rendered  the  whole  railroad  system 

405 


406  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

of  Mississippi  practically  useless  to  the  Confederates, 
thus  contributing  essentially  to  the  success  of  his  future 
operations. 

Sherman  prepared  himself  by  uniting  at  Chatta 
nooga  the  best  material  of  the  three  Union  armies,  that 
of  the  Cumberland,  that  of  the  Tennessee,  and  that 
of  the  Ohio,  forming  a  force  of  nearly  one  hundred 
thousand  men  with  two  hundred  and  fifty-four  guns. 
They  were  seasoned  veterans,  whom  three  years  of 
campaigning  had  taught  how  to  endure  every  privation, 
and  avail  themselves  of  every  resource.  They  were 
provided  with  every  essential  supply,  but  carried  with 
them  not  a  pound  of  useless  baggage  or  impedimenta 
that  could  retard  the  rapidity  of  their  movements. 

Sherman  had  received  no  specific  instructions  from 
Grant,  except  to  fight  the  enemy  and  damage  the  war 
resources  of  the  South;  but  the  situation  before  him 
clearly  indicated  the  city  of  Atlanta,  Georgia,  as  his 
first  objective,  and  as  his  necessary  route,  the  railroad 
leading  thither  from  Chattanooga.  It  was  obviously 
a  difficult  line  of  approach,  for  it  traversed  a  belt  of 
the  Alleghanies  forty  miles  in  width,  and  in  addition 
to  the  natural  obstacles  they  presented,  the  Confeder 
ate  commander,  anticipating  his  movement,  had  pre 
pared  elaborate  defensive  works  at  the  several  most 
available  points. 

As  agreed  upon  with  Grant,  Sherman  began  his 
march  on  May  5,  1864,  the  day  following  that  on  which 
Grant  entered  upon  his  Wilderness  campaign  in  Vir 
ginia.  These  pages  do  not  afford  space  to  describe  his 
progress.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  with  his  double 
numbers  he  pursued  the  policy  of  making  strong  dem 
onstrations  in  front,  with  effective  flank  movements 
to  threaten  the  railroad  in  the  Confederate  rear,  by 
which  means  he  forced  back  the  enemy  successively 


CAPTURE  OF  ATLANTA  407 

from  point  to  point,  until  by  the  middle  of  July  he  was 
in  the  vicinity  of  Atlanta,  having  during  his  advance 
made  only  one  serious  front  attack,  in  which  he  met 
a  costly  repulse.  His  progress  was  by  no  means  one 
of  mere  strategical  manoeuver.  Sherman  says  that 
during  the  month  of  May,  across  nearly  one  hundred 
miles  of  as  difficult  country  as  was  ever  fought  over 
by  civilized  armies,  the  righting  was  continuous,  almost 
daily,  among  trees  and  bushes,  on  ground  where  one 
could  rarely  see  one  hundred  yards  ahead. 

However  skilful  and  meritorious  may  have  been  the 
retreat  into  which  Johnston  had  been  forced,  it  was 
so  unwelcome  to  the  Richmond  authorities,  and  dam 
aging  to  the  Confederate  cause,  that  about  the  middle 
of  July,  Jefferson  Davis  relieved  him,  and  appointed 
one  of  his  corps  commanders,  General  J.  B.  Hood,  in 
his  place;  whose  personal  qualities  and  free  criticism 
of  his  superior  led  them  to  expect  a  change  from  a 
defensive  to  an  aggressive  campaign.  Responding  to 
this  expectation,  Hood  almost  immediately  took  the 
offensive,  and  made  vigorous  attacks  on  the  Union 
positions,  but  met  disastrous  repulse,  and  found  him 
self  fully  occupied  in  guarding  the  defenses  of  Atlanta. 
For  some  weeks  each  army  tried  ineffectual  methods 
to  seize  the  other's  railroad  communications.  But  tow 
ard  the  end  of  August,  Sherman's  flank  movements 
gained  such  a  hold  of  the  Macon  railroad  at  Jones- 
boro,  twenty-five  miles  south  of  Atlanta,  as  to  endan 
ger  Hood's  security;  and  when,  in  addition,  a  detach 
ment  sent  to  dislodge  Sherman  was  defeated,  Hood 
had  no  alternative  but  to  order  an  evacuation.  On 
September  3,  Sherman  telegraphed  to  Washington : 

"Atlanta  is  ours,  and  fairly  won.  .  .  .  Since 
May  5  we  have  been  in  one  constant  battle  or  skirmish, 
and  need  rest." 


408  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

The  fall  of  Atlanta  was  a  heavy  blow  to  the  Con 
federates.  They  had,  during  the  war,  transformed  it 
into  a  city  of  mills,  foundries,  and  workshops,  from 
which  they  drew  supplies,  ammunition,  and  equip 
ments,  and  upon  which  they  depended  largely  for  the 
manufacture  and  repair  of  arms.  But  perhaps  even 
more  important  than  the  military  damage  to  the  South 
resulting  from  its  capture,  was  its  effect  upon  Northern 
politics.  Until  then  the  presidential  campaign  in  prog 
ress  throughout  the  free  States  was  thought  by  many 
to  involve  fluctuating  chances  under  the  heavy  losses 
and  apparently  slow  progress  of  both  eastern  and  west 
ern  armies.  But  the  capture  of  Atlanta  instantly  in 
fused  new  zeal  and  confidence  among  the  Union  voters, 
and  from  that  time  onward,  the  reelection  of  Mr.  Lin 
coln  was  placed  beyond  reasonable  doubt. 

Sherman  personally  entered  the  city  on  September 
8,  and  took  prompt  measures  to  turn  it  into  a  purely 
military  post.  He  occupied  only  the  inner  line  of  its 
formidable  defenses,  but  so  strengthened  them  as  to 
make  the  place  practically  impregnable.  He  proceeded 
at  once  to  remove  all  its  non-combatant  inhabitants 
with  their  effects,  arranging  a  truce  with  Hood  under 
which  he  furnished  transportation  to  the  south  for  all 
those  whose  sympathies  were  with  the  Confederate 
cause,  and  sent  to  the  north  those  who  preferred  that 
destination.  Hood  raised  a  great  outcry  against  what 
he  called  such  barbarity  and  cruelty,  but  Sherman  re 
plied  that  war  is  war,  and  if  the  rebel  families  wanted 
peace  they  and  their  relatives  must  stop  fighting. 

"God  will  judge  us  in  due  time,  and  he  will  pro 
nounce  whether  it  be  more  humane  to  fight  with  a 
town  full  of  women,  and  the  families  of  a  brave  people 
at  our  back,  or  to  remove  them  in  time  to  places  of 
safety  among  their  own  friends  and  people." 


INVASION  OF  TENNESSEE  409 

Up  to  his  occupation  of  Atlanta,  Sherman's  further 
plans  had  neither  been  arranged  by  Grant  nor  deter 
mined  by  himself,  and  for  a  while  remained  somewhat 
undecided.  For  the  time  being,  he  was  perfectly  se 
cure  in  the  new  stronghold  he  had  captured  and  com 
pleted.  But  his  supplies  depended  upon  a  line  of  about 
one  hundred  and  twenty  miles  of  railroad  from  Atlanta 
to  Chattanooga,  and  very  near  one  hundred  and  fifty 
miles  more  from  Chattanooga  to  Nashville. .  Hood, 
held  at  bay  at  Lovejoy's  Station,  was  not  strong 
enough  to  venture  a  direct  attack  or  undertake  a  siege, 
but  chose  the  more  feasible  policy  of  operating  system 
atically  against  Sherman's  long  line  of  communications. 
In  the  course  of  some  weeks  both  sides  grew  weary  of 
the  mere  waste  of  time  and  military  strength  con 
sumed  in  attacking  and  defending  railroad  stations, 
and  interrupting  and  reestablishing  the  regularities  of 
provision  trains.  Toward  the  end  of  September,  Jef 
ferson  Davis  visited  Hood,  and  in  rearranging  some 
army  assignments,  united  Hood's  and  an  adjoining 
Confederate  department  under  the  command  of  Beau- 
regard;  partly  with  a  view  to  adding  the  counsels  of 
the  latter  to  the  always  energetic  and  bold,  but  some 
times  rash,  military  judgment  of  Hood. 

Between  these  two  Hood's  eccentric  and  futile  opera 
tions  against  Sherman's  communications  were  gradu 
ally  shaded  off  into  a  plan  for  a  Confederate  invasion 
of  Tennessee.  Sherman,  on  his  part,  finally  matured 
his  judgment  that  instead  of  losing  a  thousand  men 
a  month  merely  defending  the  railroad,  without  other 
advantage,  he  would  divide  his  army,  send  back  a  por 
tion  of  it  under  the  command  of  General  Thomas  to 
defend  the  State  of  Tennessee  against  the  impending 
invasion;  and,  abandoning  the  whole  line  of  railroad 
from  Chattanooga  to  Atlanta,  and  cutting  entirely  loose 


410  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

from  his  base  of  supplies,  march  with  the  remainder 
to  the  sea;  living  upon  the  country,  and  "making  the 
interior  of  Georgia  feel  the  weight  of  war."  Grant  did 
not  immediately  fall  in  with  Sherman's  suggestion;  and 
Sherman  prudently  waited  until  the  Confederate  plan 
of  invading  Tennessee  became  further  developed.  It 
turned  out  as  he  hoped  and  expected.  Having  gradu 
ally  ceased  his  raids  upon  the  railroad,  Hood,  by  the 
end  of  October,  moved  westward  to  Tuscumbia  on  the 
Tennessee  River,  where  he  gathered  an  army  of  about 
thirty-five  thousand,  to  which  a  cavalry  force  under 
Forrest  of  ten  thousand  more  was  soon  added. 

Under  Beauregard's  orders  to  assume  the  offensive, 
he  began  a  rapid  march  northward,  and  for  a  time  with 
a  promise  of  cutting  off  some  advanced  Union  detach 
ments.  We  need  not  follow  the  fortunes  of  this  cam 
paign  further  than  to  state  that  the  Confederate  in 
vasion  of  Tennessee  ended  in  disastrous  failure.  It 
was  severely  checked  at  the  battle  of  Franklin  on  No 
vember  30;  and  when,  in  spite  of  this  reverse,  Hood 
pushed  forward  and  set  his  army  down  before  Nash 
ville,  as  if  for  attack  or  siege,  the  Union  army,  con 
centrated  and  reinforced  to  about  fifty-five  thousand, 
was  ready.  A  severe  storm  of  rain  and  sleet  held  the 
confronting  armies  in  forced  immobility  for  a  week; 
but  on  the  morning  of  December  15,  1864,  General 
Thomas  moved  forward  to  an  attack  in  which  on  that 
and  the  following  day  he  inflicted  so  terrible  a  defeat 
upon  his  adversary,  that  the  Confederate  army  not 
only  retreated  in  rout  and  panic,  but  soon  literally  went 
to  pieces  in  disorganization,  and  disappeared  as  a  mil 
itary  entity  from  the  western  conflict. 

Long  before  this,  Sherman  had  started  on  his  famous 
march  to  the  sea.  His  explanations  to  Grant  were  so 
convincing,  that  the  general-in-chief,  on  November  2, 


THE  MARCH  TO  THE  SEA          411 

telegraphed  him :  "Go  on  as  you  propose."  In  antici 
pation  of  this  permission,  he  had  been  preparing  him 
self  ever  since  Hood  left  him  a  clear  path  by  starting 
westward  on  his  campaign  of  invasion.  From  Atlanta, 
he  sent  back  his  sick  and  wounded  and  surplus  stores 
to  Chattanooga,  withdrew  the  garrisons,  burned  the 
bridges,  broke  up  the  railroad,  and  destroyed  the  mills, 
foundries,  shops  and  public  buildings  in  Atlanta. 
With  sixty  thousand  of  his  best  soldiers,  and  sixty-five 
guns,  he  started  on  November  1 5  on  his  march  of  three 
hundred  miles  to  the  Atlantic.  They  carried  with  them 
twenty  days'  supplies  of  provisions,  five  days'  supply 
of  forage,  and  two  hundred  rounds  of  ammunition,  of 
which  each  man  carried  forty  rounds. 

With  perfect  confidence  in  their  leader,  with  perfect 
trust  in  each  others'  valor,  endurance  and  good  com 
radeship,  in  the  fine  weather  of  the  Southern  autumn, 
and  singing  the  inspiring  melody  of  uj°nn  Brown's 
Body,"  Sherman's  army  began  its  "marching  through 
Georgia"  as  gaily  as  if  it  were  starting  on  a  holiday. 
And,  indeed,  it  may  almost  be  said  such  was  their  expe 
rience  in  comparison  with  the  hardships  of  war  which 
many  of  these  veterans  had  seen  in  their  varied  cam 
paigning.  They  marched  as  nearly  as  might  be  in  four 
parallel  columns  abreast,  making  an  average  of  about 
fifteen  miles  a  day.  Kilpatrick's  admirable  cavalry 
kept  their  front  and  flanks  free  from  the  improvised 
militia  and  irregular  troopers  of  the  enemy.  Carefully 
organized  foraging  parties  brought  in  their  daily  sup 
ply  of  miscellaneous  provisions — corn,  meat,  poultry, 
and  sweet  potatoes,  of  which  the  season  had  yielded 
an  abundant  harvest  along  their  route. 

The  Confederate  authorities  issued  excited  procla 
mations  and  orders,  calling  on  the  people  to  "fly  to 
arms,"  and  to  "assail  the  invader  in  front,  flank,  and 


412  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

rear,  by  night  and  by  day."  But  no  rising  occurred 
that  in  any  way  checked  the  constant  progress  of  the 
march.  The  Southern  whites  were,  of  course,  silent 
and  sullen,  but  the  negroes  received  the  Yankees  with 
demonstrations  of  welcome  and  good  will,  and  in  spite 
of  Sherman's  efforts,  followed  in  such  numbers  as  to 
embarrass  his  progress.  As  he  proceeded,  he  de 
stroyed  the  railroads  by  filling  up  cuts,  burning  ties, 
heating  the  rails  red  hot  and  twisting  them  around 
trees  and  into  irreparable  spirals.  Threatening  the 
principal  cities  to  the  right  and  left,  he  marched  skil 
fully  between  and  past  them. 

He  reached  the  outer  defenses  of  Savannah  on  De 
cember  10,  easily  driving  before  him  about  ten  thou 
sand  of  the  enemy.  On  December  13,  he  stormed  Fort 
McAllister,  and  communicated  with  the  Union  fleet 
through  Ossabaw  Sound,  reporting  to  Washington 
that  his  march  had  been  most  agreeable,  that  he  had 
not  lost  a  wagon  on  the  trip,  that  he  had  utterly  de 
stroyed  over  two  hundred  miles  of  rails,  and  consumed 
stores  and  provisions  that  were  essential  to  Lee's  and 
Hood's  armies.  With  pardonable  exultation  General 
Sherman  telegraphed  to  President  Lincoln  on  Decem 
ber  22 : 

"I  beg  to  present  to  you  as  a  Christmas  gift  the  city 
of  Savannah,  with  one  hundred  and  fifty  heavy  guns 
and  plenty  of  ammunition.  Also  about  twenty-five 
thousand  bales  of  cotton." 

He  had  reason  to  be  gratified  with  the  warm  ac 
knowledgment  which  President  Lincoln  wrote  him  in 
the  following  letter : 

"MY  DEAR  GENERAL  SHERMAN:  Many,  many 
thanks  for  your  Christmas  gift,  the  capture  of  Savan 
nah.  When  you  were  about  leaving  Atlanta  for  the 
Atlantic  coast  I  was  anxious,  if  not  fearful ;  but  feeling 


LINCOLN   TO   SHERMAN  413 

that  you  were  the  better  judge,  and  remembering  that 
'nothing  risked,  nothing  gained/  I  did  not  interfere. 
Now,  the  undertaking  being  a  success,  the  honor  is  all 
yours,  for  I  believe  none  of  us  went  farther  than  to 
acquiesce.  And  taking  the  work  of  General  Thomas 
into  the  count,  as  it  should  be  taken,  it  is,  indeed,  a 
great  success.  Not  only  does  it  afford  the  obvious  and 
immediate  military  advantages,  but  in  showing  to  the 
world  that  your  army  could  be  divided,  putting  the 
stronger  part  to  an  important  new  service,  and  yet  leav 
ing  enough  to  vanquish  the  old  opposing  force  of  the 
whole — Hood's  army — it  brings  those  who  sat  in  dark 
ness  to  see  a  great  light.  But  what  next  ?  I  suppose  it 
will  be  safe  if  I  leave  General  Grant  and  yourself  to 
decide.  Please  make  my  grateful  acknowledgments  to 
your  whole  army,  officers  and  men." 

It  was  again  General  Sherman  who  planned  and  de 
cided  the  next  step  of  the  campaign.  Grant  sent  him 
orders  to  fortify  a  strong  post,  leave  his  artillery  and 
cavalry,  and  bring  his  infantry  by  sea  to  unite  with  the 
Army  of  the  Potomac  before  Petersburg.  Greatly  to 
Sherman's  satisfaction,  this  order  was  soon  revoked, 
and  he  was  informed  that  Grant  wished  ."the  whole 
matter  of  your  future  actions  should  be  left  entirely 
to  your  own  discretion."  In  Sherman's  mind,  the  next 
steps  to  be  taken  were  "as  clear  as  daylight."  The 
progress  of  the  war  in  the  West  could  now  be  described 
step  by  step,  and  its  condition  and  probable  course  be 
estimated  \vith  sound  judgment.  The  opening  of  the 
Mississippi  River  in  the  previous  year  had  cut  off  from 
the  rebellion  the  vast  resources  west  of  the  great  river. 
Sherman's  Meridian  campaign  in  February  had  ren 
dered  useless  the  railroads  of  the  State  of  Mississippi. 
The  capture  of  Atlanta  and  the  march  to  the  sea  had 
ruined  the  railroads  of  Georgia,  cutting  off  another 


414  ABRAHAM   LINCOLN 

huge  slice  of  Confederate  resources.  The  battles  of 
Franklin  and  Nashville  had  practically  annihilated  the 
principal  Confederate  army  in  the  West.  Sherman 
now  proposed  to  Grant  that  he  would  subject  the  two 
Carolinas  to  the  same  process,  by  marching  his  army 
through  the  heart  of  them  from  Savannah  to  Raleigh. 

"The  game  is  then  up  with  Lee,"  he  confidently 
added,  "unless  he  comes  out  of  Richmond,  avoids  you, 
and  fights  me,  in  which  case  I  should  reckon  on  your 
being  on  his  heels.  ...  If  you  feel  confident  that 
you  can  whip  Lee  outside  of  his  intrenchments,  I  feel 
equally  confident  that  I  can  handle  him  in  the  open 
country." 

Grant  promptly  adopted  the  plan,  and  by  formal 
orders  directed  Sherman  to  execute  it.  Several  minor 
western  expeditions  were  organized  to  contribute  to  its 
success.  The  Union  fleet  on  the  coast  was  held  in 
readiness  to  cooperate  as  far  as  possible  with  Sherman's 
advance,  and  to  afford  him  a  new  base  of  supply,  if, 
at  some  suitable  point  he  should  desire  to  establish 
communications  with  it.  When,  in  the  middle  of  Jan 
uary,  1865,  a  naval  expedition  captured  Fort  Fisher  at 
the  mouth  of  Cape  Fear  River,  an  army  corps  under 
General  Schofield  was  brought  east  from  Thomas's 
Army  of  the  Tennessee,  and  sent  by  sea  to  the  North 
Carolina  coast  to  penetrate  into  the  interior  and  form 
a  junction  with  Sherman  when  he  should  arrive. 

Having  had  five  weeks  for  rest  and  preparation, 
Sherman  began  the  third  stage  of  his  campaign  on 
February  i,  with  a  total  of  sixty  thousand  men,  provi 
sions  for  twenty  days,  forage  for  seven,  and  a  full 
supply  of  ammunition  for  a  great  battle.  This  new  un 
dertaking  proved  a  task  of  much  greater  difficulty  and 
severer  hardship  than  his  march  to  the  sea.  Instead  of 
the  genial  autumn  weather,  the  army  had  now  to  face 


FALL   OF   CHARLESTON  415 

the  wintry  storms  that  blew  in  from  the  neighboring 
coast.  Instead  of  the  dry  Georgia  uplands,  his  route 
lay  across  a  low  sandy  country  cut  by  rivers  with 
branches  at  right  angles  to  his  linepf  march,  and  bor 
dered  by  broad  and  miry  swamps.  But  this  was  an 
extraordinary  army,  which  faced  exposure,  labor  and 
peril  with  a  determination  akin  to  contempt.  Here 
were  swamps  and  water-courses  to  be  waded  waist 
deep ;  endless  miles  of  corduroy  road  to  be  laid  and  re- 
laid  as  course  after  course  sank  into  the  mud  under 
the  heavy  army  wagons ;  frequent  head- water  channels 
of  rivers  to  be  bridged ;  the  lines  of  railroad  along  their 
route  to  be  torn  up  and  rendered  incapable  of  repair; 
food  to  be  gathered  by  foraging;  keeping  up,  mean 
while,  a  daily  average  of  ten  or  twelve  miles  of  march 
ing.  Under  such  conditions,  Sherman's  army  made  a 
mid-winter  march  of  four  hundred  and  twenty-five 
miles  in  fifty  days,  crossing  five  navigable  rivers,  occu 
pying  three  important  cities,  and  rendering  the  whole 
railroad  system  of  South  Carolina  useless  to  the  enemy. 
The  ten  to  fifteen  thousand  Confederates  with  which 
General  Hardee  had  evacuated  Savannah  and  retreated 
to  Charleston  could,  of  course,  oppose  no  serious  oppo 
sition  to  Sherman's  march.  On  the  contrary,  when 
Sherman  reached  Columbia,  the  capital  of  South  Caro 
lina,  on  February  16,  Hardee  evacuated  Charleston, 
which  had  been  defended  for  four  long  years  against 
every  attack  of  a  most  powerful  Union  fleet,  and  where 
the  most  ingenious  siege-works  and  desperate  storming 
assault  had  failed  to  wrest  Fort  Wagner  from  the  en 
emy.  But  though  Charleston  fell  without  a  battle,  and 
was  occupied  by  the  Union  troops  on  the  eighteenth, 
the  destructive  hand  of  war  was  at  last  heavily  laid 
upon  her.  The  Confederate  government  pertinaciously 
adhered  to  the  policy  of  burning  accumulations  of 


416  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

cotton  to  prevent  it  falling  into  Union  hands;  and 
the  supply  gathered  in  Charleston  to  be  sent  abroad  by 
blockade  runners,  having  been  set  on  fire  by  the  evacu 
ating  Confederate  officials,  the  flames  not  only  spread 
to  the  adjoining  buildings,  but  grew  into  a  great  con 
flagration  that  left  the  heart  of  the  city  a  waste  of 
blackened  walls  to  illustrate  the  folly  of  the  first  seces 
sion  ordinance.  Columbia,  the  capital,  underwent  the 
same  fate,  to  even  a  broader  extent.  Here  the  cotton 
had  been  piled  in  a  narrow  street,  and  when  the  torch 
was  applied  by  similar  Confederate  orders,  the  rising 
wind  easily  floated  the  blazing  flakes  to  the  near  roofs 
of  buildings.  On  the  night  following  Sherman's  en 
trance,  the  wind  rose  to  a  gale,  and  neither  the  efforts 
of  the  citizens,  nor  the  ready  help  of  Sherman's  sol 
diers,  were  able  to  check  the  destruction.  Confeder 
ate  writers  long  nursed  the  accusation  that  it  was  the 
Union  army  which  burned  the  city  as  a  deliberate  act 
of  vengeance.  Contrary  proof  is  furnished  by  the 
orders  of  Sherman,  leaving  for  the  sufferers  a  generous 
supply  of  food,  as  well  as  by  the  careful  investigation 
by  the  mixed  commission  on  American  and  British 
claims,  under  the  treaty  of  Washington. 

Still  pursuing  his  march,  Sherman  arrived  at 
Cheraw  March  3,  and  opened  communication  with 
General  Terry,  who  had  advanced  from  Fort  Fisher  to 
Wilmington.  Hitherto,  his  advance  had  been  practi 
cally  unopposed.  But  now  he  learned  that  General 
Johnston  had  once  more  been  placed  in  command  of  the 
Confederate  forces,  and  was  collecting  an  army  near 
Raleigh,  North  Carolina.  Well  knowing  the  ability  of 
this  general,  Sherman  became  more  prudent  in  his 
movements.  But  Johnston  was  able  to  gather  a  force 
of  only  twenty-five  or  thirty  thousand  men,  of  which 
the  troops  Hardee  brought  from  Charleston  formed  the 


ARRIVAL  AT   GOLDSBORO 

nucleus;  and  the  two  minor  engagements  on  March  16 
and  19  did  little  to  impede  Sherman's  advance  to 
Goldsboro,  where  he  arrived  on  March  23,  forming  a 
junction  with  the  Union  army  sent  by  sea  under  Scho- 
field,  that  had  reached  the  same  point  the  previous  day. 
The  third  giant  stride  of  Sherman's  great  campaign 
was  thus  happily  accomplished.  His  capture  of  At 
lanta,  his  march  to  the  sea  and  capture  of  Savannah, 
his  progress  through  the  Carolinas,  and  the  fall  of 
Charleston,  formed  an  aggregate  expedition  covering 
nearly  a  thousand  miles,  with  military  results  that  ren 
dered  rebellion  powerless  in  the  central  States  of  the 
Southern  Confederacy.  Several  Union  cavalry  raids 
had  accomplished  similar  destruction  of  Confederate 
resources  in  Alabama  and  the  country  bordering  on 
East  Tennessee.  Military  affairs  were  plainly  in  a  con 
dition  which  justified  Sherman  in  temporarily  devolv 
ing  his  command  on  General  Schofield  and  hurrying 
by  sea  to  make  a  brief  visit  for  urgent  consultation  with 
General  Grant  at  his  headquarters  before  Richmond 
and  Petersburg. 


liT 


XXX 

Military  Governors — Lincoln's  Theory  of  Reconstruction 
— Congressional  Election  in  Louisiana — Letter  to  Mili 
tary  Governors — Letter  to  Shcpley — Amnesty  Procla 
mation,  December  8,  1863 — Instructions  to  Banks — 
Banks' 's  Action  in  Louisiana — Louisiana  Abolishes  Sla 
very — Arkansas  Abolishes  Slavery — Reconstruction  in 
Tennessee — Missouri  Emancipation — Lincoln's  Letter 
to  Drake — Missouri  Abolishes  Slavery — Emancipation 
in  Maryland — Maryland  Abolishes  Slavery 

TO  subdue  the  Confederate  armies  and  establish 
order  under  martial  law  was  not  the  only  task 
before  President  Lincoln.  As  rapidly  as  rebel  States 
or  portions  of  States  were  occupied  by  Federal  troops, 
it  became  necessary  to  displace  usurping  Confederate 
officials  and  appoint  in  their  stead  loyal  State,  county, 
and  subordinate  officers  to  restore  the  administration 
of  local  civil  law  under  the  authority  of  the  United 
States.  In  western  Virginia  the  people  had  spontane 
ously  effected  this  reform,  first  by  repudiating  the 
Richmond  secession  ordinance  and  organizing  a  provi 
sional  State  government,  and,  second,  by  adopting  a 
new  constitution  and  obtaining  admission  to  the  Union 
as  the  new  State  of  West  Virginia.  In  Missouri  the 
State  convention  which  refused  to  pass  a  secession  or 
dinance  effected  the  same  object  by  establishing  a  pro 
visional  State  government.  In  both  these  States  the 
whole  process  of  what  in  subsequent  years  was  com 
prehensively  designated  "reconstruction"  was  carried 

418 


MILITARY  GOVERNORS  419 

on  by  popular  local  action,  without  any  Federal  initia 
tive  or  interference  other  than  prompt  Federal  re 
cognition  and  substantial  military  support  and  pro 
tection. 

But  in  other  seceded  States  there  was  no  such 
groundwork  of  loyal  popular  authority  upon  which  to 
rebuild  the  structure  of  civil  government.  Therefore, 
when  portions  of  Tennessee,  Louisiana,  Arkansas,  and 
North  Carolina  came  under  Federal  control,  President 
Lincoln,  during  the  first  half  of  1862,  appointed  mili 
tary  governors  to  begin  the  work  of  temporary  civil 
administration.  He  had  a  clear  and  consistent  consti 
tutional  theory  under  which  this  could  be  done.  In  his 
first  inaugural  he  announced  the  doctrine  that  "the 
union  of  these  States  is  perpetual"  and  "unbroken." 
His  special  message  to  Congress  on  July  4,  1861,  added 
the  supplementary  declaration  that  "the  States  have 
their  status  in  the  Union,  and  they  have  no  other  legal 
status."  The  same  message  contained  the  further  defi 
nition  : 

"The  people  of  Virginia  have  thus  allowed  this  giant 
insurrection  to  make  its  nest  within  her  borders;  and 
this  government  has  no  choice  left  but  to  deal  with  it 
where  it  finds  it.  And  it  has  the  less  regret,  as  the  loyal 
citizens  have,  in  due  form,  claimed  its  protection. 
Those  loyal  citizens  this  government  is  bound  to  recog 
nize  and  protect,  as  being  Virginia." 

The  action  of  Congress  entirely  conformed  to  this 
theory.  That  body  admitted  to  seats  senators  and 
representatives  from  the  provisional  State  governments 
of  West  Virginia  and  Missouri ;  and  also  allowed  Sena 
tor  Andrew  Johnson  of  Tennessee  to  retain  his  seat, 
and  admitted  Horace  Maynard  and  Andrew  J.  Clem 
ents  as  representatives  from  the  same  State,  though 
since  their  election  Tennessee  had  undergone  the  usual 


420  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

secession  usurpation,  and  had  as  yet  organized  no  loyal 
provisional  government. 

The  progress  of  the  Union  armies  was  so  far  checked 
during  the  second  half  of  1862,  that  Military  Governor 
Phelps,  appointed  for  Arkansas,  did  not  assume  his 
functions;  and  Military  Governor  Stanley  wielded  but 
slight  authority  in  North  Carolina.  Senator  Andrew 
Johnson,  appointed  military  governor  of  Tennessee, 
established  himself  at  Nashville,  the  capital,  and, 
though  Union  control  of  Tennessee  fluctuated  greatly, 
he  was  able,  by  appointing  loyal  State  and  county  offi 
cers,  to  control  the  administration  of  civil  government 
in  considerable  districts,  under  substantial  Federal 
jurisdiction. 

In  the  State  of  Louisiana  the  process  of  restoring 
Federal  authority  was  carried  on  a  step  farther,  owing 
largely  to  the  fact  that  the  territory  occupied  by  the 
Union  army,  though  quite  limited,  comprising  only 
the  city  of  New  Orleans  and  a  few  adjacent  parishes, 
was  more  securely  held,  and  its  hostile  frontier  less 
disturbed.  It  soon  became  evident  that  considerable 
Union  sentiment  yet  existed  in  the  captured  city  and 
surrounding  districts,  and  when  some  of  the  loyal  citi 
zens  began  to  manifest  impatience  at  the  restraints  of 
martial  law,  President  Lincoln  in  a  frank  letter  pointed 
the  way  to  a  remedy : 

"The  people  of  Louisiana,"  he  wrote  under  date  of 
July  28,  1862,  "who  wish  protection  to  person  and 
property,  have  but  to  reach  forth  their  hands  and  take 
it.  Let  them  in  good  faith  reinaugurate  the  national 
authority  and  set  up  a  State  government  conforming 
thereto  under  the  Constitution.  They  know  how  to 
do  it,  and  can  have  the  protection  of  the  army  while 
doing  it.  The  army  will  be  withdrawn  so  soon  as  such 
State  government  can  dispense  with  its  presence,  and 


CIRCULAR   LETTER  421 

the  people  of  the  State  can  then,  upon  the  old  con 
stitutional  terms,  govern  themselves  to  their  own 
liking." 

At  about  this  date  there  occurred  the  serious  military 
crisis  in  Virginia ;  and  the  battles  of  the  Peninsula,  of 
the  second  Bull  Run,  and  of  Antietam  necessarily  com 
pelled  the  postponement  of  minor  questions.  But  dur 
ing  this  period  the  President's  policy  on  the  slavery 
question  reached  its  development  and  solution,  and 
when,  on  September  22,  he  issued  his  preliminary 
proclamation  of  emancipation,  it  also  paved  the  way 
for  a  further  defining  of  his  policy  of  reconstruction. 

That  proclamation  announced  the  penalty  of  military 
emancipation  against  all  States  in  rebellion  on  the  suc 
ceeding  first  day  of  January;  but  also  provided  that  if 
the  people  thereof  were  represented  in  Congress  by 
properly  elected  members,  they  should  be  deemed  not 
in  rebellion,  and  thereby  escape  the  penalty.  Wishing 
now  to  prove  the  sincerity  of  what  he  said  in  the 
Greeley  letter,  that  his  paramount  object  was  to  save 
the  Union,  and  not  either  to  save  or  destroy  slavery, 
he  wrote  a  circular  letter  to  the  military  governors  and 
commanders  in  Louisiana,  Tennessee,  and  Arkansas, 
instructing  them  to  permit  and  aid  the  people  within 
the  districts  held  by  them  to  hold  elections  for  members 
of  Congress,  and  perhaps  a  legislature,  State  officers, 
and  United  States  senators. 

"In  all  available  ways,"  he  wrote,  "give  the  people 
a  chance  to  express  their  wishes  at  these  elections. 
Follow  forms  of  law  as  far  as  convenient,  but  at  all 
events  get  the  expression  of  the  largest  number  of  the 
people  possible.  All  see  how  such  action  will  connect 
with  and  affect  the  proclamation  of  September  22.  Of 
course  the  men  elected  should  be  gentlemen  of  charac 
ter,  willing  to  swear  support  to  the  Constitution  as  of 


422  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

old,  and  known  to  be  above  reasonable  suspicion  of 
duplicity." 

But  the  President  wished  this  to  be  a  real  and  not 
a  sham  proceeding,  as  he  explained  a  month  later  in  a 
letter  to  Governor  Shepley : 

"We  do  not  particularly  need  members  of  Congress 
from  there  to  enable  us  to  get  along  with  legislation 
here.  What  we  do  want  is  the  conclusive  evidence 
that  respectable  citizens  of  Louisiana  are  willing  to  be 
members  of  Congress  and  to  swear  support  to  the  Con 
stitution,  and  that  other  respectable  citizens  there  are 
willing  to  vote  for  them  and  send  them.  To  send  a 
parcel  of  Northern  men  here  as  representatives,  elected, 
as  would  be  understood  (and  perhaps  really  so),  at 
the  point  of  the  bayonet,  would  be  disgraceful  and  out 
rageous  ;  and  were  I  a  member  of  Congress  here,  I 
would  vote  against  admitting  any  such  man  to  a  seat." 

Thus  instructed,  Governor  Shepley  caused  an  elec 
tion  to  be  held  in  the  first  and  second  congressional 
districts  of  Louisiana  on  December  3,  1862,  at  which 
members  of  Congress  were  chosen.  No  Federal  office 
holder  was  a  candidate,  and  about  one  half  the  usual 
vote  was  polled.  The  House  of  Representatives  ad 
mitted  them  to  seats  after  full  scrutiny,  the  chairman 
of  the  committee  declaring  this  "had  every  essential  of 
a  regular  election  in  a  time  of  most  profound  peace, 
with  the  exception  of  the  fact  that  the  proclamation  was 
issued  by  the  military  instead  of  the  civil  governor  of 
Louisiana." 

Military  affairs  were  of  such  importance  and  ab 
sorbed  so  much  attention  during  the  year  1863,  both  at 
Washington  and  at  the  headquarters  of  the  various 
armies,  that  the  subject  of  reconstruction  was  of  neces 
sity  somewhat  neglected.  The  military  governor  of 
Louisiana  indeed  ordered  a  registration  of  loyal  voters, 


LETTER  TO  GENERAL  BANKS        423 

about  the  middle  of  June,  for  the  purpose  of  organizing 
a  loyal  State  government;  but  its  only  result  was  to 
develop  an  inevitable  antagonism  and  contest  between 
conservatives  who  desired  that  the  old  constitution  of 
Louisiana  prior  to  the  rebellion  should  be  revived,  by 
which  the  institution  of  slavery  as  then  existing  would 
be  maintained,  and  the  free-State  party  which  de 
manded  that  an  entirely  new  constitution  be  framed 
and  adopted,  in  which  slavery  should  be  summarily 
abolished.  The  conservatives  asked  President  Lincoln 
to  adopt  their  plan.  While  the  President  refused  this, 
he  in  a  letter  to  General  Banks  dated  August  5,  1863, 
suggested  the  middle  course  of  gradual  emancipation. 

"For  my  own  part,"  he  wrote,  "I  think  I  shall  not, 
in  any  event,  retract  the  emancipation  proclamation; 
nor,  as  Executive,  ever  return  to  slavery  any  person 
who  is  freed  by  the  terms  of  that  proclamation,  or  by 
any  of  the  acts  of  Congress.  If  Louisiana  shall  send 
members  to  Congress,  their  admission  to  seats  will 
depend,  as  you  know,  upon  the  respective  houses  and 
not  upon  the  President." 

"I  would  be  glad  for  her  to  make  a  new  constitution 
recognizing  the  emancipation  proclamation  and  adopt 
ing  emancipation  in  those  parts  of  the  State  to 
which  the  proclamation  does  not  apply.  And  while 
she  is  at  it,  I  think  it  would  not  be  objectionable  for 
her  to  adopt  some  practical  system  by  which  the  two 
races  could  gradually  live  themselves  out  of  their  old 
relation  to  each  other,  and  both  come  out  better  pre 
pared  for  the  new.  Education  for  young  blacks  should 
be  included  in  the  plan.  After  all,  the  power  or  ele 
ment  of  'contract'  may  be  sufficient  for  this  probation 
ary  period,  and  by  its  simplicity  and  flexibility  may  be 
the  better." 

During  the   autumn   months   the   President's   mind 


424  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

dwelt  more  and  more  on  the  subject  of  reconstruction, 
and  he  matured  a  general  plan  which  he  laid  before 
Congress  in  his  annual  message  to  that  body  on  Decem 
ber  8,  1863.  He  issued  on  the  same  day  a  proclamation 
of  amnesty,  on  certain  conditions,  to  all  persons  in  re 
bellion,  except  certain  specified  classes,  who  should  take 
a  prescribed  oath  of  allegiance.  The  proclamation  fur 
ther  provided  that  whenever  a  number  of  persons  so 
amnestied  in  any  rebel  State,  equal  to  one  tenth  the 
vote  cast  at  the  presidential  election  of  1860,  should 
"reestablish  a  State  government  which  shall  be  repub 
lican,  and  in  no  wise  contravening  said  oath,"  such 
would  be  recognized  as  the  true  government  of  the 
State.  The  annual  message  discussed  and  advocated 
the  plan  at  length,  but  also  added :  "Saying  that  re 
construction  will  be  accepted  if  presented  in  a  specified 
way,  it  is  not  said  it  will  never  be  accepted  in  any  other 
way." 

This  plan  of  reconstructing  what  came  to  be  called 
"ten  per  cent.  States,"  met  much  opposition  in  Con 
gress,  and  that  body,  reversing  its  action  in  former  in 
stances,  long  refused  admission  to  members  and  sena 
tors  from  States  similarly  organized;  but  the  point 
needs  no  further  mention  here. 

A  month  before  the  amnesty  proclamation  the  Presi 
dent  had  written  to  General  Banks,  expressing  his 
great  disappointment  that  the  reconstruction  in  Louisi 
ana  had  been  permitted  to  fall  in  abeyance  by  the  lead 
ing  Union  officials  there,  civil  and  military. 

"I  do,  however,"  he  wrote,  "urge  both  you  and  them 
to  lose  no  more  time.  Governor  Shepley  has  special  in 
structions  from  the  War  Department.  I  wish  him — 
these  gentlemen  and  others  cooperating — without  wait 
ing  for  more  territory,  to  go  to  work  and  give  me  a 
tangible  nucleus  which  the  remainder  of  the  State  may 


INSTRUCTIONS  TO  BANKS          425 

rally  around  as  fast  as  it  can,  and  which  I  can  at  once 
recognize  and  sustain  as  the  true  State  government." 

He  urged  that  such  reconstruction  should  have  in 
view  a  new  free-State  constitution,  for,  said  he : 

"If  a  few  professedly  loyal  men  shall  draw  the  dis 
loyal  about  them,  and  colorably  set  up  a  State  govern 
ment,  repudiating  the  emancipation  proclamation  and 
reestablishing  slavery,  I  cannot  recognize  or  sustain 
their  work.  ...  I  have  said,  and  say  again,  that 
if  a  new  State  government,  acting  in  harmony  with  this 
government  and  consistently  with  general  freedom, 
shall  think  best  to  adopt  a  reasonable  temporary  ar 
rangement  in  relation  to  the  landless  and  houseless 
freed  people,  I  do  not  object;  but  my  word  is  out  to 
be  for  and  not  against  them  on  the  question  of  their 
permanent  freedom." 

General  Banks  in  reply  excused  his  inaction  by  ex 
plaining  that  the  military  governor  and  others  had 
given  him  to  understand  that  they  were  exclusively 
charged  with  the  work  of  reconstruction  in  Louisiana. 
To  this  the  President  rejoined  under  date  of  December 
24,  1863: 

"I  have  all  the  while  intended  you  to  be  master,  as 
well  in  regard  to  reorganizing  a  State  government  for 
Louisiana  as  in  regard  to  the  military  matters  of  the 
department,  and  hence  my  letters  on  reconstruction 
have  nearly,  if  not  quite,  all  been  addressed  to  you. 
My  error  has  been  that  it  did  not  occur  to  me  that  Gov 
ernor  Shepley  or  any  one  else  would  set  up  a  claim 
to  act  independently  of  you.  ...  I  now  dis 
tinctly  tell  you  that  you  are  master  of  all,  and  that  I 
wish  you  to  take  the  case  as  you  find  it,  and  give  us 
a  free-State  reorganization  of  Louisiana  in  the  shortest 
possible  time." 

Under  this  explicit  direction  of  the  President,  and 


426  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

basing  his  action  on  martial  law  as  the  fundamental 
law  of  the  State,  the  general  caused  a  governor  and 
State  officials  to  be  elected  on  February  22,  1864.  To 
override  the  jealousy  and  quarrels  of  both  the  conser 
vative  and  free-State  parties,  he  set  out  in  his  proclama 
tion  that  the  officials  to  be  chosen  should— 

"Until  others  are  appointed  by  competent  authority, 
constitute  the  civil  government  of  the  State,  under  the 
constitution  and  laws  of  Louisiana,  except  so  much 
of  the  said  constitution  and  laws  as  recognize,  regulate, 
or  relate  to  slavery;  which,  being  inconsistent  with  the 
present  condition  of  public  affairs,  and  plainly  inappli 
cable  to  any  class  of  persons  now  existing  within  its 
limits,  must  be  suspended,  and  they  are  therefore  and 
hereby  declared  to  be  inoperative  and  void." 

The  newly  elected  governor  was  inaugurated  on 
March  4,  with  imposing  public  ceremonies,  and  the 
President  also  invested  him  "with  the  powers  exer 
cised  hitherto  by  the  military  governor  of  Louisiana." 
General  Banks  further  caused  delegates  to  a  State  con 
vention  to  be  chosen,  who,  in  a  session  extending  from 
April  6  to  July  25,  perfected  and  adopted  a  new  con 
stitution,  which  was  again  adopted  by  popular  vote  on 
September  5  following.  General  Banks  reported  the 
constitution  to  be  "one  of  the  best  ever  penned. 
It  abolishes  slavery  in  the  State,  and  forbids  the  legis 
lature  to  enact  any  law  recognizing  property  in  man. 
The  emancipation  is  instantaneous  and  absolute,  with 
out  condition  or  compensation,  and  nearly  unanimous." 

The  State  of  Arkansas  had  been  forced  into  rebellion 
by  military  terrorism,  and  remained  under  Confederate 
domination  only  because  the  Union  armies  could  afford 
the  latent  loyal  sentiment  of  the  State  no  effective  sup 
port  until  the  fall  of  Vicksburg  and  the  opening  of  the 
Mississippi.  After  that  decisive  victory,  General 


INSTRUCTIONS   TO   STEELE         427 

Steele  marched  a  Union  column  of  about  thirteen  thou 
sand  from  Helena  to  Little  Rock,  the  capital,  which 
surrendered  to  him  on  the  evening  of  September  10, 
1863.  By  December,  eight  regiments  of  Arkansas 
citizens  had  been  formed  for  service  in  the  Union  army ; 
and,  following  the  amnesty  proclamation  of  December 
8,  the  reorganization  of  a  loyal  State  government  was 
speedily  brought  about,  mainly  by  spontaneous  popular 
action,  of  course  under  the  direction  and  with  the  assis 
tance  of  General  Steele. 

In  response  to  a  petition,  President  Lincoln  sent 
General  Steele  on  January  20,  1864,  a  letter  repeating 
substantially  the  instructions  he  had  given  General 
Banks  for  Louisiana.  Before  these  could  be  carried 
out,  popular  action  had  assembled  at  Little  Rock  on 
January  8,  1864,  a  formal  delegate  convention,  com 
posed  of  forty-four  delegates  who  claimed  to  represent 
twenty-two  out  of  the  fifty-four  counties  of  the  State. 
On  January  22  this  convention  adopted  an  amended 
constitution  which  declared  the  act  of  secession  null 
and  void,  abolished  slavery  immediately  and  uncondi 
tionally,  and  wholly  repudiated  the  Confederate  debt. 
The  convention  appointed  a  provisional  State  govern 
ment,  and  under  its  schedule  an  election  was  held  on 
March  14,  1864.  During  the  three  days  on  which  the 
polls  were  kept  open,  under  the  orders  of  General 
Steele,  who  by  the  President's  suggestion  adopted  the 
convention  program,  a  total  vote  of  12,179  was  cast 
for  the  constitution,  and  only  226  against  it ;  while  the 
provisional  governor  was  also  elected  for  a  new  term, 
together  with  members  of  Congress  and  a  legislature 
which  in  due  time  chose  United  States  senators.  By 
this  time  Congress  had  manifested  its  opposition  to  the 
President's  plan,  but  Mr.  Lincoln  stood  firm,  and  on 
June  29  wrote  to  General  Steele : 


428  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

"I  understand  that  Congress  declines  to  admit  to 
seats  the  persons  sent  as  senators  and  representatives 
from  Arkansas.  These  persons  apprehend  that  in  con 
sequence  you  may  not  support  the  new  State  govern 
ment  there  as  you  otherwise  would.  My  wish  is  that 
you  give  that  government  and  the  people  there  the 
same  support  and  protection  that  you  would  if  the  mem 
bers  had  been  admitted,  because  in  no  event,  nor  in  any 
view  of  the  case,  can  this  do  any  harm,  while  it  will  be 
the  best  you  can  do  toward  suppressing  the  rebellion." 

While  Military  Governor  Andrew  Johnson  had  been 
the  earliest  to  begin  the  restoration  of  loyal  Federal 
authority  in  the  State  of  Tennessee,  the  course  of  cam 
paign  and  battle  in  that  State  delayed  its  completion 
to  a  later  period  than  in  the  others.  The  invasion  of 
Tennessee  by  the  Confederate  General  Bragg  in  the 
summer  of  1862,  and  the  long  delay  of  the  Union 
General  Rosecrans  to  begin  an  active  campaign  against 
him  during  the  summer  of  1863,  kept  civil  reorganiza 
tion  in  a  very  uncertain  and  chaotic  condition.  When 
at  length  Rosecrans  advanced  and  occupied  Chatta 
nooga,  President  Lincoln  deemed  it  a  propitious  time 
to  vigorously  begin  reorganization,  and  under  date  of 
September  IT,  1863,  he  wrote  the  military  governor 
emphatic  suggestions  that : 

"The  reinauguration  must  not  be  such  as  to  give  con 
trol  of  the  State  and  its  representation  in  Congress 
to  the  enemies  of  the  Union,  driving  its  friends  there 
into  political  exile.  .  .  .  You  must  have  it  other 
wise.  Let  the  reconstruction  be  the  work  of  such  men 
only  as  can  be  trusted  for  the  Union.  Exclude  all 
others;  and  trust  that  your  government  so  organized 
will  be  recognized  here  as  being  the  one  of  republican 
form  to  be  guaranteed  to  the  State,  and  to  be  protected 
against  invasion  and  domestic  violence.  It  is  some- 


INSTRUCTIONS  TO  JOHNSON        429 

thing  on  the  question  of  time  to  remember  that  it  can 
not  be  known  who  is  next  to  occupy  the  position  I  now 
hold,  nor  what  he  will  do.  I  see  that  you  have  de 
clared  in  favor  of  emancipation  in  Tennessee,  for 
which,  may  God  bless  you.  Get  emancipation  into  your 
new  State  government — constitution — and  there  will 
be  no  such  word  as  fail  for  your  case." 

In  another  letter  of  September  19,  the  President  sent 
the  governor  specific  authority  to  execute  the  scheme 
outlined  in  his  letter  of  advice;  but  no  substantial  suc 
cess  had  yet  been  reached  in  the  process  of  reconstruc 
tion  in  Tennessee  during  the  year  1864,  when  the  Con 
federate  army  under  Hood  turned  northward  from 
Atlanta  to  begin  its  third  and  final  invasion  of  the 
State.  This  once  more  delayed  all  work  of  recon 
struction  until  the  Confederate  army  was  routed  and 
dispersed  by  the  battle  of  Nashville  on  December  15, 
1864.  Previous  popular  action  had  called  a  State  con 
vention,  which,  taking  immediate  advantage  of  the 
expulsion  of  the  enemy,  met  in  Nashville  on  January 
9,  1865,  in  which  fifty-eight  counties  and  some  regi 
ments  were  represented  by  about  four  hundred  and 
sixty-seven  delegates.  After  six  days  of  deliberation 
the  convention  adopted  a  series  of  amendments  to  the 
constitution,  the  main  ordinance  of  which  provided : 

"That  slavery  and  involuntary  servitude,  except  as 
a  punishment  for  crime,  whereof  the  party  shall  have 
been  duly  convicted,  are  hereby  forever  abolished  and 
prohibited  throughout  the  State." 

These  amendments  were  duly  adopted  at  a  popular 
election  held  on  February  22,  and  the  complete  organ 
ization  of  a  loyal  State  government  under  them  fol 
lowed  in  due  course. 

The  State  of  Missouri  needed  no  reconstruction. 
It  has  already  been  said  that  her  local  affairs  were  ad- 


430  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

ministered  by  a  provisional  State  government  insti 
tuted  by  the  State  convention  chosen  by  popular  elec 
tion  before  rebellion  broke  out.  In  this  State,  there 
fore,  the  institution  of  slavery  was  suppressed  by  the 
direct  action  of  the  people,  but  not  without  a  long  and 
bitter  conflict  of  party  factions  and  military  strife. 
There  existed  here  two  hostile  currents  of  public  opin 
ion,  one,  the  intolerant  pro-slavery  prejudices  of  its 
rural  population;  the  other,  the  progressive  and  lib 
eral  spirit  dominant  in  the  city  of  St.  Louis,  with  its 
heavy  German  population,  which,  as  far  back  as  1856, 
had  elected  to  Congress  a  candidate  who  boldly  advo 
cated  gradual  emancipation :  St.  Louis,  with  outlying 
cities  and  towns,  supplying  during  the  whole  rebel 
lion  the  dominating  influence  that  held  the  State  in  the 
Union,  aryi  at  length  transformed  her  from  a  slave  to 
a  free  State. 

Missouri  suffered  severely  in  the  war,  but  not 
through  important  campaigns  or  great  battles.  Per 
sistent  secession  conspiracy,  the  Kansas  episodes  of 
border  strife,  and  secret  orders  of  Confederate  agents 
from  Arkansas  instigating  unlawful  warfare,  made 
Missouri  a  hotbed  of  guerrilla  uprisings  and  of  relent 
less  neighborhood  feuds,  in  which  armed  partizan  con 
flict  often  degenerated  into  shocking  barbarity,  and 
the  pretense  of  war  into  the  malicious  execution  of 
private  vengeance.  President  Lincoln  drew  a  vivid 
picture  of  the  chronic  disorders  in  Missouri  in  reply 
to  complaints  demanding  the  removal  of  General  Scho- 
field  from  local  military  command : 

"We  are  in  civil  war.  In  such  cases  there  always  is 
a  main  question ;  but  in  this  case  that  question  is  a  per 
plexing  compound — Union  and  slavery.  It  thus  be 
comes  a  question  not  of  two  sides  merely,  but  of  at 
least  four  sides,  even  among  those  who  are  for  the 


LETTER  TO  DRAKE  431 

Union,  saying  nothing  of  those  who  are  against  it. 
Thus,  those  who  are  for  the  Union  with,  but  not  with 
out,  slavery — those  for  it  without,  but  not  with — 
those  for  it  with  or  without,  but  prefer  it  with — and 
those  for  it  with  or  without,  but  prefer  it  without. 
Among  these  again  is  a  subdivision  of  those  who  are 
for  gradual  but  not  for  immediate,  and  those  who  are 
for  immediate,  but  not  for  gradual  extinction  of  slavery. 
It  is  easy  to  conceive  that  all  these  shades  of  opinion, 
and  even  more,  may  be  sincerely  entertained  by  honest 
and  truthful  men.  Yet,  all  being  for  the  Union,  by  rea 
son  of  these  differences  each  will  prefer  a  different  way 
of  sustaining  the  Union.  At  once  sincerity  is  ques 
tioned,  and  motives  are  assailed.  Actual  war  coming, 
blood  grows  hot,  and  blood  is  spilled.  Thought  is 
forced  from  old  channels  into  confusion.  Deception 
breeds  and  thrives.  Confidence  dies  and  universal  sus 
picion  reigns.  Each  man  feels  an  impulse  to  kill  his 
neighbor,  lest  he  be  first  killed  by  him.  Revenge  and 
retaliation  follow.  And  all  this,  as  before  said,  may 
be  among  honest  men  only.  But  this  is  not  all.  Every 
foul  bird  comes  abroad  and  every  dirty  reptile  rises  up. 
These  add  crime  to  confusion.  Strong  measures 
deemed  indispensable,  but  harsh  at  best,  such  men  make 
worse  by  maladministration.  Murders  for  old 
grudges,  and  murders  for  pelf,  proceed  under  any 
cloak  that  will  best  cover  for  the  occasion.  These 
causes  amply  account  for  what  has  occurred  in  Mis 
souri,  without  ascribing  it  to  the  weakness  or  wicked 
ness  of  any  general.  The  newspaper  files,  those  chron 
iclers  of  current  events,  will  show  that  the  evils  now 
complained  of  were  quite  as  prevalent  under  Fremont, 
Hunter,  Halleck,  and  Curtis,  as  under  Schofield.  .  .  . 
I  do  not  feel  justified  to  enter  upon  the  broad  field  you 
present  in  regard  to  the  political  differences  between 


432  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

radicals  and  conservatives.  From  time  to  time  I  have 
done  and  said  what  appeared  to  me  proper  to  do  and 
say.  The  public  knows  it  all.  It  obliges  nobody  to  fol 
low  me,  and  I  trust  it  obliges  me  to  follow  nobody. 
The  radicals  and  conservatives  each  agree  with  me  in 
some  things  and  disagree  in  others.  I  could  wish  both 
to  agree  with  me  in  all  things;  for  then  they  would 
agree  with  each  other,  and  would  be  too  strong  for  any 
foe  from  any  quarter.  They,  however,  choose  to  do 
otherwise,  and  I  do  not  question  their  right.  I,  too, 
shall  do  what  seems  to  be  my  duty.  I  hold  whoever 
commands  in  Missouri,  or  elsewhere,  responsible  to  me, 
and  not  to  either  radicals  or  conservatives.  It  is  my 
duty  to  hear  all;  but  at  last  I  must,  within  my  sphere, 
judge  what  to  do  and  what  to  forbear." 

It  is  some  consolation  to  history,  that  out  of  this 
blood  and  travail  grew  the  political  regeneration  of  the 
State.  Slavery  and  emancipation  never  gave  each 
other  a  moment's  truce.  The  issue  was  raised  to  an 
acute  stage  by  Fremont's  proclamation  in  August, 
1 86 1.  Though  that  ill-advised  measure  was  revoked 
by  President  Lincoln,  the  friction  and  irritation  of  war 
kept  it  alive,  and  in  the  following  year  a  member  of  the 
Missouri  State  convention  offered  a  bill  to  accept  and 
apply  President  Lincoln's  plan  of  compensated  abolish 
ment.  Further  effort  was  made  in  this  direction  in 
Congress,  where  in  January,  1863,  the  House  passed 
a  bill  appropriating  ten  million  dollars,  and  in  Febru 
ary,  the  Senate  another  bill  appropriating  fifteen  mil 
lion  dollars  to  aid  compensated  abolishment  in  Mis 
souri.  But  the  stubborn  opposition  of  three  pro-slavery 
Missouri  members  of  the  House  prevented  action  on 
the  latter  bill  or  any  compromise. 

The  question,  however,  continually  grew  among  the 
people  of  Missouri,  and  made  such  advance  that  parties, 


LETTER  TO  SCHOFIELD  433 

accepting  the  main  point  as  already  practically  de 
cided,  at  length  only  divided  upon  the  mode  of  pro 
cedure.  The  conservatives  wanted  the  work  to  be 
done  by  the  old  State  convention,  the  radicals  desired 
to  submit  it  to  a  new  convention  fresh  from  the  people. 
Legislative  agreement  having  failed,  the  provisional 
governor  called  the  old  State  convention  together. 
The  convention  leaders  who  controlled  that  body  in 
quired  of  the  President  whether  he  would  sustain  their 
action.  To  this  he  made  answer  in  a  letter  to  Schofield 
dated  June  22,  1863: 

"Your  despatch,  asking  in  substance  whether,  in 
case  Missouri  shall  adopt  gradual  emancipation,  the 
general  government  will  protect  slave-owners  in  that 
species  of  property  during  the  short  time  it  shall  be 
permitted  by  the  State  to  exist  within  it,  has  been 
received.  Desirous  as  I  am  that  emancipation  shall 
be  adopted  by  Missouri,  and  believing  as  I  do  that 
gradual  can  be  made  better  than  immediate  for  both 
black  and  white,  except  when  military  necessity 
changes  the  case,  my  impulse  is  to  say  that  such  pro 
tection  would  be  given.  I  cannot  know  exactly  what 
shape  an  act  of  emancipation  may  take.  If  the  period 
from  the  initiation  to  the  final  end  should  be  compara 
tively  short,  and  the  act  should  prevent  persons  being 
sold  during  that  period  into  more  lasting  slavery,  the 
whole  would  be  easier.  I  do  not  wish  to  pledge  the 
general  government  to  the  affirmative  support  of  even 
temporary  slavery  beyond  what  can  be  fairly  claimed 
under  the  Constitution.  I  suppose,  however,  this  is 
not  desired,  but  that  it  is  desired  for  the  military  force 
of  the  United  States,  while  in  Missouri,  to  not  be  used 
in  subverting  the  temporarily  reserved  legal  rights  in 
slaves  during  the  progress  of  emancipation.  This  I 
would  desire  also." 

28 


434  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Proceeding  with  its  work,  the  old  State  convention, 
which  had  hitherto  made  a  most  honorable  record, 
neglected  a  great  opportunity.  It  indeed  adopted  an 
ordinance  of  gradual  emancipation  on  July  i,  1863, 
but  of  such  an  uncertain  and  dilatory  character,  that 
public  opinion  in  the  State  promptly  rejected  it.  By 
the  death  of  the  provisional  governor  on  January  31, 
1864,  the  conservative  party  of  Missouri  lost  its  most 
trusted  leader,  and  thereafter  the  radicals  succeeded 
to  the  political  power  of  the  State.  At  the  presiden 
tial  election  of  1864,  that  party  chose  a  new  State  con 
vention,  which  met  in  St.  Louis  on  January  6,  1865, 
and  on  the  sixth  day  of  its  session  (January  n)  for 
mally  adopted  an  ordinance  of  immediate  emancipation. 

Maryland,  like  Missouri,  had  no  need  of  recon 
struction.  Except  for  the  Baltimore  riot  and  the  arrest 
of  her  secession  legislature  during  the  first  year  of  the 
war,  her  State  government  continued  its  regular  func 
tions.  But  a  strong  popular  undercurrent  of  virulent 
secession  sympathy  among  a  considerable  minority  of 
her  inhabitants  was  only  held  in  check  by  the  mili 
tary  power  of  the  Union,  and  for  two  years  eman 
cipation  found  no  favor  in  the  public  opinion  of  the 
State.  Her  representatives,  like  those  of  most  other 
border  States,  coldly  refused  President  Lincoln's 
earnest  plea  to  accept  compensated  abolishment;  and 
a  bill  in  Congress  to  give  Maryland  ten  million  dollars 
for  that  object  was  at  once  blighted  by  the  declaration 
of  one  of  her  leading  representatives  that  Maryland 
did  not  ask  for  it.  Nevertheless,  the  subject  could  no 
more  be  ignored  there  than  in  other  States;  and  after 
the  President's  emancipation  proclamation  an  emanci 
pation  party  developed  itself  in  Maryland. 

There  was  no  longer  any  evading  the  practical  issue, 
when,  by  the  President's  direction,  the  Secretary  of 


LINCOLN   TO   HOFFMAN  435 

War  issued  a  military  order,  early  in  October,  1863, 
regulating  the  raising  of  colored  troops  in  certain  bor 
der  States,  which  decreed  that  slaves  might  be  enlisted 
without  consent  of  their  owners,  but  provided  compen 
sation  in  such  cases.  At  the  November  election  of  that 
year  the  emancipation  party  of  Maryland  elected  its 
ticket  by  an  overwhelming  majority,  and  a  legislature 
that  enacted  laws  under  which  a  State  convention  was 
chosen  to  amend  the  constitution.  Of  the  delegates 
elected  on  April  6,  1864,  sixty-one  were  emancipation 
ists,  and  only  thirty-five  opposed. 

After  t\vo  months'  debate  this  convention  by  nearly 
two  thirds  adopted  an  article : 

"That  hereafter  in  this  State  there  shall  be  neither 
slavery  nor  involuntary  servitude  except  in  punishment 
of  crime  whereof  the  party  shall  have  been  duly  con 
victed  ;  and  all  persons  held  to  service  or  labor  as  slaves 
are  hereby  declared  free." 

The  decisive  test  of  a  popular  vote  accepting  the 
amended  constitution  as  a  whole,  remained,  however, 
yet  to  be  undergone.  President  Lincoln  willingly  com 
plied  with  a  request  to  throw  his  official  voice  and 
influence  in  favor  of  the  measure,  and  wrote,  on  Octo 
ber  10,  1864: 

"A  convention  of  Maryland  has  framed  a  new  con 
stitution  for  the  State;  a  public  meeting  is  called  for 
this  evening  at  Baltimore  to  aid  in  securing  its  ratifica 
tion  by  the  people ;  and  you  ask  a  word  from  me  for  the 
occasion.  I  presume  the  only  feature  of  the  instru 
ment  about  which  there  is  serious  controversy  is  that 
which  provides  for  the  extinction  of  slavery.  It  needs 
not  to  be  a  secret,  and  I  presume  it  is  no  secret,  that 
I  wish  success  to  this  provision.  I  desire  it  on  every 
consideration.  I  wish  all  men  to  be  free.  I  wish  the 
material  prosperity  of  the  already  free,  which  I  feel 


436  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

sure  the  extinction  of  slavery  would  bring.  I  wish  to 
see  in  process  of  disappearing  that  only  thing  which 
ever  could  bring  this  nation  to  civil  war.  I  attempt 
no  argument.  Argument  upon  the  question  is  already 
exhausted  by  the  abler,  better  informed,  and  more 
immediately  interested  sons  of  Maryland  herself.  I 
only  add  that  I  shall  be  gratified  exceedingly  if  the 
good  people  of  the  State  shall,  by  their  votes,  ratify  the 
new  constitution." 

At  the  election  which  was  held  on  October  12  and  13, 
stubborn  Maryland  conservatism,  whose  roots  reached 
far  back  to  the  colonial  days,  made  its  last  desperate 
stand,  and  the  constitution  was  ratified  by  a  majority 
of  only  three  hundred  and  seventy-five  votes  out  of 
a  total  of  nearly  sixty  thousand.  But  the  result  was 
accepted  as  decisive,  and  in  due  time  the  governor 
issued  his  proclamation,  declaring  the  new  constitution 
legally  adopted. 


XXXI 

Shaping  of  the  Presidential  Campaign — Criticisms  of  Mr. 
Lincoln — Chase's  Presidential  Ambitions — The  Pome- 
roy  Circular — Cleveland  Convention — Attempt  to  Nom 
inate  Grant — Meeting  of  Baltimore  Convention — Lin 
coln's  Letter  to  Schurz — Platform  of  Republican 
Convention — Lincoln  Renominated — Refuses  to  Indi 
cate  Preference  for  Vice-President — Johnson  Nomi 
nated  for  V ice-President — Lincoln's  Speech  to  Commit 
tee  of  Notification — Reference  to  Mexico  in  his  Letter 
of  Acceptance — The  French  in  Mexico 

THE  final  shaping  of  the  campaign,  the  definition 
of  the  issues,  the  wording  of  the  platforms,  and 
selection  of  the  candidates,  had  grown  much  more  out 
of  national  politics  than  out  of  mere  party  combination 
or  personal  intrigues.  The  success  of  the  war,  and 
fate  of  the  Union,  of  course  dominated  every  other 
consideration;  and  next  to  this  the  treatment  of  the 
slavery  question  became  in  a  hundred  forms  almost 
a  direct  personal  interest.  Mere  party  feeling,  which 
had  utterly  vanished  for  a  few  months  in  the  first 
grand  uprising  of  the  North,  had  been  once  more  awak 
ened  by  the  first  Bull  Run  defeat,  and  from  that  time 
onward  was  heard  in  loud  and  constant  criticism  of 
Mr.  Lincoln  and  the  acts  of  his  supporters  wherever, 
they  touched  the  institution  of  slavery.  The  Demo 
cratic  party,  which  had  been  allied  with  the  Southern 
politicians  in  the  interests  of  that  institution  through 
so  many  decades,  quite  naturally  took  up  its  habitual 

437 


438  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

role  of  protest  that  slavery  should  receive  no  hurt  or 
damage  from  the  incidents  of  war,  where,  in  the  bor 
der  States,  it  still  had  constitutional  existence  among 
loyal  Union  men. 

On  the  other  hand,  among  Republicans  who  had 
elected  Mr.  Lincoln,  and  who,  as  a  partizan  duty,  in 
dorsed  and  sustained  his  measures,  Fremont's  procla 
mation  of  military  emancipation  in  the  first  year  of 
the  war  excited  the  over-hasty  zeal  of  antislavery  ex 
tremists,  and  developed  a  small  but  very  active  faction 
which  harshly  denounced  the  President  when  Mr.  Lin 
coln  revoked  that  premature  and  ill-considered  mea 
sure.  No  matter  what  the  President  subsequently  did 
about  slavery,  the  Democratic  press  and  partizans  al 
ways  assailed  him  for  doing  too  much,  while  the  Fre 
mont  press  and  partizans  accused  him  of  doing  too 
little. 

Meanwhile,  personal  considerations  were  playing 
their  minor,  but  not  unimportant  parts.  When  Mc- 
Clellan  was  called  to  Washington,  and  during  all  the 
hopeful  promise  of  the  great  victories  he  was  expected 
to  win,  a  few  shrewd  New  York  Democratic  politicians 
grouped  themselves  about  him,  and  put  him  in  train 
ing  as  the  future  Democratic  candidate  for  President; 
and  the  general  fell  easily  into  their  plans  and  ambi 
tions.  Even  after  he  had  demonstrated  his  military  in 
capacity,  when  he  had  reaped  defeat  instead  of  victory, 
and  earned  humiliation  instead  of  triumph,  his  partizan 
adherents  clung  to  the  desperate  hope  that  though  they 
could  not  win  applause  for  him  as  a  conqueror,  they 
might  yet  create  public  sympathy  in  his  behalf  as  a 
neglected  and  persecuted  genius. 

The  cabinets  of  Presidents  frequently  develop  rival 
presidential  aspirants,  and  that  of  Mr.  Lincoln  was 
no  exception.  Considering  the  strong  men  who  com- 


CHASE'S   AMBITION  439 

posed  it,  the  only  wonder  is  that  there  was  so  little 
friction  among  them.  They  disagreed  constantly  and 
heartily  on  minor  questions,  both  with  Mr.  Lincoln 
and  with  each  other,  but  their  great  devotion  to  the 
Union,  coupled  with  his  kindly  forbearance,  and  the 
clear  vision  which  assured  him  mastery  over  himself 
and  others,  kept  peace  and  even  personal  affection  in 
his  strangely  assorted  official  family. 

The  man  who  developed  the  most  serious  presiden 
tial  aspirations  was  Salmon  P.  Chase,  his  Secretary  of 
the  Treasury,  who  listened  to  and  actively  encouraged 
the  overtures  of  a  small  faction  of  the  Republican  party 
which  rallied  about  him  at  the  end  of  the  year  1863. 
Pure  and  disinterested,  and  devoted  with  all  his  ener 
gies  and  powers  to  the  cause  of  the  Union,  he  was  yet 
singularly  ignorant  of  current  public  thought,  and  ab 
solutely  incapable  of  judging  men  in  their  true  rela 
tions.  He  regarded  himself  as  the  friend  of  Mr.  Lin 
coln,  and  made  strong  protestations  to  him  and  to 
others  of  this  friendship,  but  he  held  so  poor  an  opinion 
of  the  President's  intellect  and  character,  compared 
with  his  own,  that  he  could  not  believe  the  people  blind 
enough  to  prefer  the  President  to  himself.  He  im 
agined  that  he  did  not  covet  advancement,  and  was 
anxious  only  for  the  public  good ;  yet,  in  the  midst  of 
his  enormous  labors  found  time  to  write  letters  to  every 
part  of  the  country,  protesting  his  indifference  to  the 
presidency,  but  indicating  his  willingness  to  accept  it, 
and  painting  pictures  so  dark  of  the  chaotic  state  of 
affairs  in  the  government,  that  the  irresistible  infer 
ence  was  that  only  he  could  save  the  country.  From 
the  beginning  Mr.  Lincoln  had  been  aware  of  this 
quasi-candidacy,  which  continued  all  through  the  win 
ter.  Indeed,  it  was  impossible  to  remain  unconscious 
of  it,  although  he  discouraged  all  conversation  on  the 


440  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

subject,  and  refused  to  read  letters  relating  to  it.  He 
had  his  own  opinion  of  the  taste  and  judgment  dis 
played  by  Mr.  Chase  in  his  criticisms  of  the  President 
and  his  colleagues  in  the  cabinet,  but  he  took  no  note  of 
them. 

"I  have  determined,"  he  said,  "to  shut  my  eyes,  so 
far  as  possible,  to  everything  of  the  sort.  Mr.  Chase 
makes  a  good  secretary,  and  I  shall  keep  him  where  he 
is.  If  he  becomes  President,  all  right.  I  hope  we  may 
never  have  a  worse  man." 

And  he  went  on  appointing  Mr.  Chase's  partizans 
and  adherents  to  places  in  the  government.  Although 
his  own  renomination  was  a  matter  in  regard  to  which 
he  refused  to  talk  much,  even  with  intimate  friends, 
he  was  perfectly  aware  of  the  true  drift  of  things.  In 
capacity  of  appreciating  popular  currents  Chase  was  as 
a  child  beside  him;  and  he  allowed  the  opposition  to 
himself  in  his  own  cabinet  to  continue,  without  ques 
tion  or  remark,  all  the  more  patiently,  because  he  knew 
how  feeble  it  really  was. 

The  movement  in  favor  of  Mr.  Chase  culminated 
in  the  month  of  February,  1864,  in  a  secret  circular 
signed  by  Senator  Pomeroy  of  Kansas,  and  widely 
circulated  through  the  Union;  which  criticised  Mr. 
Lincoln's  "tendency  toward  compromises  and  tempor 
ary  expedients" ;  explained  that  even  if  his  reelection 
were  desirable,  it  was  practically  impossible  in  the  face 
of  the  opposition  that  had  developed ;  and  lauded  Chase 
as  the  statesman  best  fitted  to  rescue  the  country  from 
present  perils  and  guard  it  against  future  ills.  Of 
course  copies  of  this  circular  soon  reached  the  White 
House,  but  Mr.  Lincoln  refused  to  look  at  them,  and 
they  accumulated  unread  in  the  desk  of  his  secretary. 
Finally,  it  got  into  print,  whereupon  Mr.  Chase  wrote 
to  the  President  to  assure  him  he  had  no  knowledge  of 


CLEVELAND  CONVENTION  441 

the  letter  before  seeing  it  in  the  papers.  To  this  Mr. 
Lincoln  replied : 

'  I  was  not  shocked  or  surprised  by  the  appearance 
of  the  letter,  because  I  had  had  knowledge  of  Mr. 
Pomeroy's  committee,  and  of  secret  issues  which  I  sup 
posed  came  from  it,  ...  for  several  weeks.  I 
have  known  just  as  little  of  these  things  as  my  friends 
have  allowed  me  to  know.  ...  I  fully  concur 
with  you  that  neither  of  us  can  be  justly  held  respon 
sible  for  what  our  respective  friends  may  do  without 
our  instigation  or  countenance.  .  .  .  Whether 
you  shall  remain  at  the  head  of  the  Treasury  Depart 
ment  is  a  question  which  I  will  not  allow  myself  to  con 
sider  from  any  standpoint  other  than  my  judgment  of 
the  public  service,  and,  in  that  view,  I  do  not  perceive 
occasion  for  a  change." 

Even  before  the  President  wrote  this  letter,  Mr. 
Chase's  candidacy  had  passed  out  of  sight.  In  fact, 
it  never  really  existed  save  in  the  imagination  of  the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury  and  a  narrow  circle  of  his 
adherents.  He  was  by  no  means  the  choice  of  the  body 
of  radicals  who  were  discontented  with  Mr.  Lincoln 
because  of  his  deliberation  in  dealing  with  the  slavery 
question,  or  of  those  others  who  thought  he  was  going 
entirely  too  fast  and  too  far. 

Both  these  factions,  alarmed  at  the  multiplying  signs 
which  foretold  his  triumphant  renomination,  issued 
calls  for  a  mass  convention  of  the  people,  to  meet  at 
Cleveland,  Ohio,  on  May  31,  a  week  before  the  as 
sembling  of  the  Republican  national  convention  at 
Baltimore,  to  unite  in  a  last  attempt  to  stem  the  tide 
in  his  favor.  Democratic  newspapers  naturally  made 
much  of  this,  heralding  it  as  a  hopeless  split  in  the 
Republican  ranks,  and  printing  fictitious  despatches 
from  Cleveland  reporting  that  city  thronged  with  in- 


442  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

fluential  and  earnest  delegates.  Far  from  this  being 
the  case,  there  was  no  crowd  and  still  less  enthusiasm. 
Up  to  the  very  day  of  its  meeting  no  place  was  pro 
vided  for  the  sessions  of  the  convention,  which  finally 
came  together  in  a  small  hall  whose  limited  capacity 
proved  more  than  ample  for  both  delegates  and  specta 
tors.  Though  organization  was  delayed  nearly  two 
hours  in  the  vain  hope  that  more  delegates  would  ar 
rive,  the  men  who  had  been  counted  upon  to  give  char 
acter  to  the  gathering  remained  notably  absent.  The 
delegates  prudently  refrained  from  counting  their  mea 
ger  number,  and  after  preliminaries  of  a  more  or  less 
farcical  nature,  voted  for  a  platform  differing  little 
from  that  afterward  adopted  at  Baltimore,  listened  to 
the  reading  of  a  vehement  letter  from  Wendell  Phillips 
denouncing  Mr.  Lincoln's  administration  and  counsel 
ing  the  choice  of  Fremont  for  President,  nominated 
that  general  by  acclamation,  with  General  John  Coch- 
rane  of  New  York  for  his  running-mate,  christened 
themselves  the  "Radical  Democracy/'  and  adjourned. 

The  press  generally  greeted  the  convention  and  its 
work  with  a  chorus  of  ridicule,  though  certain  Demo 
cratic  newspapers,  from  motives  harmlessly  transpar 
ent,  gave  it  solemn  and  unmeasured  praise.  General 
Fremont,  taking  his  candidacy  seriously,  accepted  the 
nomination,  but  three  months  later,  finding  no  response 
from  the  public,  withdrew  from  the  contest. 

At  this  fore-doomed  Cleveland  meeting  a  feeble  at 
tempt  had  been  made  by  the  men  who  considered  Mr. 
Lincoln  too  radical,  to  nominate  General  Grant  for 
President,  instead  of  Fremont;  but  he  had  been  de 
nounced  as  a  Lincoln  hireling,  and  his  name  uncere 
moniously  swept  aside.  During  the  same  week  another 
effort  in  the  same  direction  was  made  in  New  York, 
though  the  committee  having  the  matter  in  charge 


LETTER  TO  CONKLING  443 

made  no  public  avowal  of  its  intention  beforehand, 
merely  calling  a  meeting  to  express  the  gratitude  of 
the  country  to  the  general  for  his  signal  services;  and 
even  inviting  Mr.  Lincoln  to  take  part  in  the  proceed 
ings.  This  he  declined  to  do,  but  wrote: 

"I  approve,  nevertheless,  whatever  may  tend  to 
strengthen  and  sustain  General  Grant  and  the  noble 
armies  now  under  his  direction.  My  previous  high  es 
timate  of  General  Grant  has  been  maintained  and 
heightened  by  what  has  occurred  in  the  remarkable 
campaign  he  is  now  conducting,  while  the  magni 
tude  and  difficulty  of  the  task  before  him  do  not 
prove  less  than  I  expected.  He  and  his  brave  soldiers 
are  now  in  the  midst  of  their  great  trial,  and  I  trust 
that  at  your  meeting  you  will  so  shape  your  good  words 
that  they  may  turn  to  men  and  guns,  moving  to  his 
and  their  support." 

With  such  gracious  approval  of  the  movement  the 
meeting  naturally  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Lincoln 
men.  General  Grant  neither  at  this  time  nor  at  any 
other,  gave  the  least  countenance  to  the  efforts  which 
were  made  to  array  him  in  political  opposition  to  the 
President. 

These  various  attempts  to  discredit  the  name  of  Mr. 
Lincoln  and  nominate  some  one  else  in  his  place  caused 
hardly  a  ripple  on  the  great  current  of  public  opinion. 
Death  alone  could  have  prevented  his  choice  by  the 
Union  convention.  So  absolute  and  universal  was  the 
tendency  that  most  of  the  politicians  made  no  effort 
to  direct  or  guide  it;  they  simply  exerted  themselves 
to  keep  in  the  van  and  not  be  overwhelmed.  The  con 
vention  met  on  June  7,  but  irregular  nominations  of 
Mr.  Lincoln  for  President  had  begun  as  early  as  Jan 
uary  6,  when  the  first  State  convention  of  the  year  was 
held  in  New  Hampshire. 


444  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

From  one  end  of  the  country  to  the  other  such  spon 
taneous  nominations  had  joyously  echoed  his  name. 
Only  in  Missouri  did  it  fail  of  overwhelming  adhesion, 
and  even  in  the  Missouri  Assembly  the  resolution  in 
favor  of  his  renomination  was  laid  upon  the  table  by  a 
majority  of  only  eight.  The  current  swept  on  irresis 
tibly  throughout  the  spring.  A  few  opponents  of  Mr. 
Lincoln  endeavored  to  postpone  the  meeting  of  the 
national  convention  until  September,  knowing  that 
their  only  hope  lay  in  some  possible  accident  of  the 
summer.  But  though  supported  by  so  powerful  an  in 
fluence  as  the  New  York  "Tribune,"  the  National  Com 
mittee  paid  no  attention  to  this  appeal.  Indeed,  they 
might  as  well  have  considered  the  request  of  a  com 
mittee  of  prominent  citizens  to  check  an  impending 
thunderstorm. 

Mr.  Lincoln  took  no  measures  whatever  to  promote 
his  own  candidacy.  While  not  assuming  airs  of  re 
luctance  or  bashfulness,  he  discouraged  on  the  part  of 
strangers  any  suggestion  as  to  his  reelection.  Among 
his  friends  he  made  no  secret  of  his  readiness  to  con 
tinue  the  work  he  was  engaged  in,  if  such  should  be 
the  general  wish.  "A  second  term  would  be  a  great 
honor  and  a  great  labor,  which  together,  perhaps,  I 
would  not  decline  if  tendered,"  he  wrote  Elihu  B. 
Washburne.  He  not  only  opposed  no  obstacle  to  the 
ambitions  of  Chase,  but  received  warnings  to  beware  of 
Grant  in  the  same  serene  manner,  answering  tranquilly, 
"If  he  takes  Richmond,  let  him  have  it."  And  he  dis 
couraged  office-holders,  civil  or  military,  who  showed 
any  special  zeal  in  his  behalf.  To  General  Schurz,  who 
wrote  asking  permission  to  take  an  active  part  in  the 
presidential  campaign,  he  replied : 

Allow  me  to  suggest  that  if  you  wish  to  remain  in 
the  military  service,  it  is  very  dangerous  for  you  to  get 


LETTERS  TO  SCHURZ  445 

temporarily  out  of  it;  because,  with  a  major-general 
once  out,  it  is  next  to  impossible  for  even  the  Presi 
dent  to  get  him  in  again.  ...  Of  course  I  would 
be  very  glad  to  have  your  service  for  the  country  in 
the  approaching  political  canvass ;  but  I  fear  we  cannot 
properly  have  it  without  separating  you  from  the 
military."  And  in  a  later  letter  he  added:  "I  perceive 
no  objection  to  your  making  a  political  speech  when 
you  are  where  one  is  to  be  made;  but  quite  surely, 
speaking  in  the  North  and  fighting  in  the  South  at 
the  same  time  are  not  possible;  nor  could  I  be  justified 
to  detail  any  officer  to  the  political  campaign  during 
its  continuance  and  then  return  him  to  the  army." 

Not  only  did  he  firmly  take  this  stand  as  to  his  own 
nomination,  but  enforced  it  even  more  rigidly  in  cases 
where  he  learned  that  Federal  office-holders  were  work 
ing  to  defeat  the  return  of  certain  Republican  congress 
men.  In  several  such  instances  he  wrote  instructions 
of  which  the  following  is  a  type : 

"Complaint  is  made  to  me  that  you  are  using  your 
official  power  to  defeat  Judge  Kelley's  renomination 
to  Congress.  .  .  .  The  correct  principle,  I  think, 
is  that  all  our  friends  should  have  absolute  freedom  of 
choice  among  our  friends.  My  wish,  therefore,  is  that 
you  will  do  just  as  you  think  fit  with  your  own  suf 
frage  in  the  case,  and  not  constrain  any  of  your  sub 
ordinates  to  do  other  than  as  he  thinks  fit  with  his." 

He  made,  of  course,  no  long  speeches  during  the 
campaign,  and  in  his  short  addresses,  at  Sanitary  Fairs, 
in  response  to  visiting  delegations,  or  on  similar  oc 
casions  where  custom  and  courtesy  decreed  that  he 
must  say  something,  preserved  his  mental  balance  un 
disturbed,  speaking  heartily  and  to  the  point,  but  skil 
fully  avoiding  the  perils  that  beset  the  candidate  who 
talks. 


446  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

When  at  last  the  Republican  convention  came  to 
gether  on  June  7,  1864,  it  had  less  to  do  than  any  other 
convention  in  our  political  history;  for  its  delegates 
were  bound  by  a  peremptory  mandate.  It  was  opened 
by  brief  remarks  from  Senator  Morgan  of  New  York, 
whose  significent  statement  that  the  convention  would 
fall  far  short  of  accomplishing  its  great  mission  unless 
it  declared  for  a  Constitutional  amendment  prohibit 
ing  African  slavery,  was  loudly  cheered.  In  their 
speeches  on  taking  the  chair,  both  the  temporary  chair 
man,  Rev.  Robert  J.  Breckinridge  of  Kentucky,  and 
the  permanent  chairman,  William  Dennison  of  Ohio, 
treated  Mr.  Lincoln's  nomination  as  a  foregone  conclu 
sion,  and  the  applause  which  greeted  his  name  showed 
that  the  delegates  did  not  resent  this  disregard  of  cus 
tomary  etiquette.  There  were,  in  fact,  but  three  tasks 
before  the  convention — to  settle  the  status  of  con 
testing  delegations,  to  agree  upon  a  platform,  and  to 
nominate  a  candidate  for  Vice-President. 

The  platform  declared  in  favor  of  crushing  rebellion 
and  maintaining  the  integrity  of  the  Union,  commend 
ing  the  government's  determination  to  enter  into  no 
compromise  with  the  rebels.  It  applauded  President 
Lincoln's  patriotism  and  fidelity  in  the  discharge  of 
his  duties,  and  stated  that  only  those  in  harmony  with 
"these  resolutions"  ought  to  have  a  voice  in  the  ad 
ministration  of  the  government.  This,  while  intended 
to  win  support  of  radicals  throughout  the  Union,  was 
aimed  particularly  at  Postmaster  General  Blair,  who 
had  made  many  enemies.  It  approved  all  acts  directed 
against  slavery;  declared  in  favor  of  a  constitutional 
amendment  forever  abolishing  it;  claimed  full  protec 
tion  of  the  laws  of  war  for  colored  troops;  expressed 
gratitude  to  the  soldiers  and  sailors  of  the  Union ;  pro 
nounced  in  favor  of  encouraging  foreign  immigration ; 


LINCOLN  RENOMINATED  447 

of  building  a  Pacific  railway;  of  keeping  inviolate  the 
faith  of  the  nation,  pledged  to  redeem  the  national 
debt;  and  vigorously  reaffirmed  the  Monroe  Doctrine. 

Then  came  the  nominations.  The  only  delay  in  reg 
istering  the  will  of  the  convention  occurred  as  a  conse 
quence  of  the  attempt  of  members  to  do  it  by  irregular 
and  summary  methods.  When  Mr.  Delano  of  Ohio 
made  the  customary  motion  to  proceed  to  the  nomi 
nation,  Simon  Cameron  moved  as  a  substitute  the  re- 
nomination  of  Lincoln  and  Hamlin  by  acclamation. 
A  long  wrangle  ensued  on  the  motion  to  lay  this  sub 
stitute  on  the  table,  which  was  finally  brought  to  an 
end  by  the  cooler  heads,  who  desired  that  whatever 
opposition  to  Mr.  Lincoln  there  might  be  in  the  con 
vention  should  have  fullest  opportunity  of  expression. 
The  nominations,  therefore,  proceeded  by  call  of  States 
in  the  usual  way.  The  interminable  nominating 
speeches  of  recent  years  had  not  yet  come  into  fashion. 
B.  C.  Cook,  the  chairman  of  the  Illinois  delegation, 
merely  said: 

"The  State  of  Illinois  again  presents  to  the  loyal 
people  of  this  nation  for  President  of  the  United  States, 
Abraham  Lincoln — God  bless  him!" 

Others,  who  seconded  the  nomination,  were  equally 
brief.  Every  State  gave  its  undivided  vote  for  Lin 
coln,  with  the  exception  of  Missouri,  which  cast  its 
vote,  under  positive  instructions,  as  the  chairman 
stated,  for  Grant.  But  before  the  result  was  an 
nounced,  John  F.  Hume  of  Missouri  moved  that  Mr. 
Lincoln's  nomination  be  declared  unanimous.  This 
could  not  be  done  until  the  result  of  the  balloting  was 
made  known — four  hundred  and  eighty-four  for  Lin 
coln,  twenty-two  for  Grant.  Missouri  then  changed 
its  vote,  and  the  secretary  read  the  grand  total  of  five 
hundred  and  six  for  Lincoln;  the  announcement  being 


448  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

greeted  with  a  storm  of  cheering  which  lasted  many 
minutes. 

The  principal  names  mentioned  for  the  vice-presi 
dency  were  Hannibal  Hamlin,  the  actual  incumbent ; 
Andrew  Johnson  of  Tennessee;  and  Daniel  S.  Dick 
inson  of  New  York.  Besides  these,  General  L.  H. 
Rousseau  had  the  vote  of  his  own  State — Kentucky. 
The  radicals  of  Missouri  favored  General  B.  F.  Butler, 
who  had  a  few  scattered  votes  also  from  New  England. 
Among  the  principal  candidates,  however,  the  voters 
were  equally  enough  divided  to  make  the  contest  ex 
ceedingly  spirited  and  interesting. 

For  several  days  before  the  convention  met  Mr.  Lin 
coln  had  been  besieged  by  inquiries  as  to  his  personal 
wishes  in  regard  to  his  associate  on  the  ticket.  He  had 
persistently  refused  to  give  the  slightest  intimation  of 
such  wish.  His  private  secretary,  Mr.  Nicolay,  who 
was  at  Baltimore  in  attendance  at  the  convention,  was 
well  acquainted  with  this  attitude;  but  at  last,  over 
borne  by  the  solicitations  of  the  chairman  of  the  Illinois 
delegation,  who  had  been  perplexed  at  the  advocacy  of 
Joseph  Holt  by  Leonard  Swett,  one  of  the  President's 
most  intimate  friends,  Mr.  Nicolay  wrote  to  Mr.  Hay, 
who  had  been  left  in  charge  of  the  executive  office  in 
his  absence: 

"Cook  wants  to  know,  confidentially,  whether  Swett 
is  all  right ;  whether  in  urging  Holt  for  Vice-President 
he  reflects  the  President's  wishes ;  whether  the  President 
has  any  preference,  either  personal  or  on  the  score  of 
policy;  or  whether  he  wishes  not  even  to  interfere  by 
a  confidential  intimation.  .  .  .  Please  get  this  in 
formation  for  me,  if  possible." 

The  letter  was  shown  to  the  President,  who  indorsed 
upon  it : 

"Swett  is  unquestionably  all  right,     Mr.  Holt  is  a 


JOHNSON   VICE-PRESIDENT  449 

good  man,  but  I  had  not  heard  or  thought  of  him  for 
V.  P.  Wish  not  to  interfere  about  V.  P.  Cannot  in 
terfere  about  platform.  Convention  must  judge  for 
itself." 

This  positive  and  final  instruction  was  sent  at  once 
to  Mr.  Nicolay,  and  by  him  communicated  to  the  Presi 
dent's  most  intimate  friends  in  the  convention.  It  was 
therefore  with  minds  absolutely  untrammeled  by  even 
any  knowledge  of  the  President's  wishes  that  the  con 
vention  went  about  its  work  of  selecting  his  associate 
on  the  ticket.  It  is  altogether  probable  that  the  ticket 
of  1860  would  have  been  nominated  without  a  contest 
had  it  not  been  for  the  general  impression,  in  and  out  of 
the  convention,  that  it  would  be  advisable  to  select  as 
a  candidate  for  the  vice-presidency  a  war  Democrat. 
Mr.  Dickinson,  while  not  putting  himself  forward  as 
a  candidate,  had  sanctioned  the  use  of  his  name  on 
the  special  ground  that  his  candidacy  might  attract 
to  the  support  of  the  Union  party  many  Democrats 
who  would  have  been  unwilling  to  support  a  ticket 
avowedly  Republican ;  but  these  considerations  weighed 
with  still  greater  force  in  favor  of  Mr.  Johnson,  who 
was  not  only  a  Democrat,  but  also  a  citizen  of  a  slave 
State.  The  first  ballot  showed  that  Mr.  Johnson  had 
received  two  hundred  votes,  Mr.  Hamlin  one  hundred 
and  fifty,  and  Mr.  Dickinson  one  hundred  and  eight ; 
and  before  the  result  was  announced  almost  the  whole 
convention  turned  their  votes  to  Johnson;  whereupon 
his  nomination  was  declared  unanimous.  The  work 
was  so  quickly  done  that  Mr.  Lincoln  received  notice 
of  the  action  of  the  convention  only  a  few  minutes  after 
the  telegram  announcing  his  own  renomination  had 
reached  him. 

Replying  next  day  to  a  committee  of  notification,  he 
said  in  part : 

29 


450  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

"I  will  neither  conceal  my  gratification  nor  restrain 
the  expression  of  my  gratitude  that  the  LTnion  people, 
through  their  convention,  in  the  continued  effort  to 
save  and  advance  the  nation,  have  deemed  me  not  un 
worthy  to  remain  in  my  present  position.  I  know  no 
reason  to  doubt  that  I  shall  accept  the  nomination  ten 
dered;  and  yet,  perhaps  I  should  not  declare  definitely 
before  reading  and  considering  what  is  called  the  plat 
form.  I  will  say  now,  however,  I  approve  the  declara 
tion  in  favor  of  so  amending  the  Constitution  as  to 
prohibit  slavery  throughout  the  nation.  When  the 
people  in  revolt,  with  a  hundred  days  of  explicit  notice 
that  they  could  within  those  days  resume  their  alle 
giance  without  the  overthrow  of  their  institutions,  and 
that  they  could  not  resume  it  afterward,  elected  to  stand 
out,  such  amendment  to  the  Constitution  as  is  now  pro 
posed  became  a  fitting  and  necessary  conclusion  to  the 
final  success  of  the  Union  cause.  ...  In  the  joint 
names  of  Liberty  and  Union,  let  us  labor  to  give  it 
legal  form  and  practical  effect." 

In  his  letter  of  June  29,  formally  accepting  the  nom 
ination,  the  President  observed  the  same  wise  rule  of 
brevity  which  he  had  followed  four  years  before.  He 
made  but  one  specific  reference  to  any  subject  of  dis 
cussion.  While  he  accepted  the  convention's  resolution 
reaffirming  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  he  gave  the  conven 
tion  and  the  country  distinctly  to  understand  that  he 
stood  by  the  action  already  adopted  by  himself  and 
the  Secretary  of  State.  He  said : 

"There  might  be  misunderstanding  were  I  not  to  say 
that  the  position  of  the  government  in  relation  to  the 
action  of  France  in  Mexico,  as  assumed  through  the 
State  Department  and  approved  and  indorsed  by  the 
convention  among  the  measures  and  acts  of  the  Execu 
tive,  will  be  faithfully  maintained  so  long  as  the  state 


MEXICO  45i 

of  facts  shall  leave  that  position  pertinent  and  appli 
cable." 

This  resolution,  which  was,  in  truth,  a  more  vigor 
ous  assertion  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine  than  the  author 
of  that  famous  tenet  ever  dreamed  of  making,  -had  been 
introduced  in  the  convention  by  the  radicals  as  a  covert 
censure  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  attitude  toward  the  French 
invasion  of  our  sister  republic;  but  through  skilful 
wording  of  the  platform  had  been  turned  by  his  friends 
into  an  indorsement  of  the  administration. 

And,  indeed,  this  was  most  just,  since  from  the  be 
ginning  President  Lincoln  and  Mr.  Seward  had  done 
all  in  their  power  to  discourage  the  presence  of  foreign 
troops  on  Mexican  territory.  When  a  joint  expedition 
by  England,  France,  and  Spain  had  been  agreed  upon 
to  seize  certain  Mexican  ports  in  default  of  a  money 
indemnity  demanded  by  those  countries  for  outrages 
against  their  subjects,  England  had  invited  the  United 
States  to  be  a  party  to  the  convention.  Instead,  Mr. 
Lincoln  and  Mr.  Seward  attempted  to  aid  Mexico  with 
a  sufficient  sum  to  meet  these  demands,  and  notified 
Great  Britain  of  their  intention  to  do  so,  and  the 
motives  which  prompted  them.  The  friendly  assis 
tance  came  to  naught;  but  as  the  three  powers  vigor 
ously  disclaimed  any  designs  against  Mexico's  territory 
or  her  form  of  government,  the  United  States  saw  no 
necessity  for  further  action,  beyond  a  clear  definition 
of  its  own  attitude  for  the  benefit  of  all  the  parties. 

This  it  continued  to  repeat  after  England  withdrew 
from  the  expedition,  and  Spain,  soon  recalling  her 
troops,  left  Napoleon  III  to  set  the  Archduke  Max 
imilian  on  his  shadowy  throne,  and  to  develop  in  the 
heart  of  America  his  scheme  of  an  empire  friendly  to 
the  South.  At  the  moment  the  government  was  un 
able  to  do  more,  though  recognizing  the  veiled  hos- 


452  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

tility  of  Europe  which  thus  manifested  itself  in  a 
movement  on  what  may  be  called  the  right  flank  of 
the  republic.  While  giving  utterance  to  no  expressions 
of  indignation  at  the  aggressions,  or  of  gratification 
at  disaster  which  met  the  aggressor,  the  President  and 
Mr.  Seward  continued  to  assert,  at  every  proper  oppor 
tunity,  the  adherence  of  the  American  government  to 
its  traditional  policy  of  discouraging  European  inter 
vention  in  the  affairs  of  the  New  World. 


XXXII 

The  Bogus  Proclamation — The  Wade-Davis  Manifesto — 
Resignation  of  Mr.  Chase — Fessenden  Succeeds  Him 
— The  Greeley  Peace  Conference — Jaquess-Gilmore 
Mission — Letter  of  Raymond — Bad  Outlook  for  the 
Election — Mr.  Lincoln  on  the  Issues  of  the  Campaign 
— President's  Secret  Memorandum — Meeting  of  Demo 
cratic  National  Convention — McClellan  Nominated— 
His  Letter  of  Acceptance — Lincoln  Re  elect  ed^-His 
Speech  on  Night  of  Election — The  Electoral  Vote — 
Annual  Message  of  December  6,  1864 — Resignation  of 
McClellan  from  the  Army 

THE  seizure  of  the  New  York  "Journal  of  Com 
merce"  and  New  York  "World,"  in  May,  1864, 
for  publishing  a  forged  proclamation  calling  for  four 
hundred  thousand  more  troops,  had  caused  great  excite 
ment  among  the  critics  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  administration. 
The  terrible  slaughter  of  Grant's  opening  campaign 
against  Richmond  rendered  the  country  painfully  sensi 
tive  to  such  news  at  the  moment ;  and  the  forgery, 
which  proved  to  be  the  work  of  two  young  Bohemians 
of  the  press,  accomplished  its  purpose  of  raising  the 
price  of  gold,  and  throwing  the  Stock  Exchange  into  a 
temporary  fever.  Telegraphic  announcement  of  the  im 
posture  soon  quieted  the  flurry,  and  the  quick  detec 
tion  of  the  guilty  parties  reduced  the  incident  to  its 
true  rank ;  but  the  fact  that  the  fiery  Secretary  of  War 
had  meanwhile  issued  orders  for  the  suppression  of 
both  newspapers  and  the  arrest  of  their  editors  was 

453 


454  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

neither  forgiven  nor  forgotten.  The  editors  were 
never  incarcerated,  and  the  journals  resumed  publica 
tion  after  an  interval  of  only  two  days,  but  the  incident 
was  vigorously  employed  during  the  entire  summer 
as  a  means  of  attack  upon  the  administration. 

Violent  opposition  to  Mr.  Lincoln  came  also  from 
those  members  of  both  Houses  of  Congress  who  dis 
approved  his  attitude  on  reconstruction.  Though  that 
part  of  his  message  of  December  8,  1863,  relating  to 
the  formation  of  loyal  State  governments  in  districts 
which  had  been  in  rebellion  at  first  received  enthu 
siastic  commendation  from  both  conservatives  and  rad 
icals,  it  was  soon  evident  that  the  millennium  had  not 
yet  arrived,  and  that  in  a  Congress  composed  of  men 
of  such  positive  convictions  and  vehement  character, 
there  were  many  who  would  not  submit  permanently 
to  the  leadership  of  any  man,  least  of  all  to  that  of  one 
so  reasonable,  so  devoid  of  malice,  as  the  President. 

Henry  Winter  Davis  at  once  moved  that  that  part 
of  the  message  be  referred  to  a  special  committee  of 
which  he  was  chairman,  and  on  February  15  reported 
a  bill  whose  preamble  declared  the  Confederate  States 
completely  out  of  the  Union;  prescribing  a  totally  dif 
ferent  method  of  reestablishing  loyal  State  govern 
ments,  one  of  the  essentials  being  the  prohibition  of 
slavery.  Congress  rejected  the  preamble,  but  after  ex 
tensive  debate  accepted  the  bill,  \vhich  breathed  the 
same  spirit  throughout.  The  measure  was  also  finally 
acceded  to  in  the  Senate,  and  came  to  Mr.  Lincoln  for 
signature  in  the  closing  hours  of  the  session.  He  laid 
it  aside  and  went  on  with  other  business,  despite  the 
evident  anxiety  of  several  friends,  who  feared  his  fail 
ure  to  indorse  it  would  lose  the  Republicans  many  votes 
in  the  Northwest.  In  stating  his  attitude  to  his  cab 
inet,  he  said : 


WADE-DAVIS   MANIFESTO  455 

"This  bill  and  the  position  of  these  gentlemen  seem 
to  me,  in  asserting  that  the  insurrectionary  States  are 
no  longer  in  the  Union,  to  make  the  fatal  admission 
that  States,  whenever  they  please,  may  of  their  own 
motion  dissolve  their  connection  with  the  Union.  Now 
we  cannot  survive  that  admission,  I  am  convinced.  If 
that  be  true,  I  am  not  President;  these  gentlemen  are 
not  Congress.  I  have  laboriously  endeavored  to  avoid 
that  question  ever  since  it  first  began  to  be  mooted,  and 
thus  to  avoid  confusion  and  disturbance  in  our  own 
councils.  It  was  to  obviate  this  question  that  I  ear 
nestly  favored  the  movement  for  an  amendment  to 
the  Constitution  abolishing  slavery,  which  passed  the 
Senate  and  failed  in  the  House.  I  thought  it  much 
better,  if  it  were  possible,  to  restore  the  Union  without 
the  necessity  of  a  violent  quarrel  among  its  friends  as 
to  whether  certain  States  have  been  in  or  out  of  the 
Union  during  the  war — a  merely  metaphysical  ques 
tion,  and  one  unnecessary  to  be  forced  into  discussion." 

But  though  every  member  of  the  cabinet  agreed  with 
him,  he  foresaw  the  importance  of  the  step  he  had 
resolved  to  take,  and  its  possible  disastrous  conse 
quences  to  himself.  When  some  one  said  that  the 
threats  of  the  radicals  were  without  foundation,  and 
that  the  people  would  not  bolt  their  ticket  on  a  ques 
tion  of  metaphysics,  he  answered : 

"If  they  choose  to  make  a  point  upon  this,  I  do  not 
doubt  that  they  can  do  harm.  They  have  never  been 
friendly  to  me.  At  all  events,  I  must  keep  some 
consciousness  of  being  somewhere  near  right.  I 
must  keep  some  standard  or  principle  fixed  within 
myself." 

Convinced,  after  fullest  deliberation,  that  the  bill 
was  too  restrictive  in  its  provisions,  and  yet  unwilling 
to  reject  whatever  of  practical  good  might  be  accom- 


456  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

plished  by  it,  he  disregarded  precedents,  and  acting 
on  his  lifelong  rule  of  taking  the  people  into  his  con 
fidence,  issued  a  proclamation  on  July  8,  giving  a  copy 
of  the  bill  of  Congress,  reciting  the  circumstances 
under  which  it  was  passed,  and  announcing  that  while 
he  was  unprepared  by  formal  approval  of  the  bill  to  be 
inflexibly  committed  to  any  single  plan  of  restoration, 
or  to  set  aside  the  free-State  governments  already 
adopted  in  Arkansas  and  Louisiana,  or  to  declare 
that  Congress  was  competent  to  decree  the  abolishment 
of  slavery;  yet  he  was  fully  satisfied  with  the  plan  as 
one  very  proper  method  of  reconstruction,  and  prom 
ised  executive  aid  to  any  State  that  might  see  fit  to 
adopt  it. 

The  great  mass  of  Republican  voters,  who  cared  little 
for  the  "metaphysics"  of  the  case,  accepted  this  procla 
mation,  as  they  had  accepted  that  issued  six  months 
before,  as  the  wisest  and  most  practicable  method  of 
handling  the  question ;  but  among  those  already  hostile 
to  the  President,  and  those  whose  devotion  to  the  cause 
of  freedom  was  so  ardent  as  to  make  them  look  upon 
him  as  lukewarm,  the  exasperation  which  was  already 
excited  increased.  The  indignation  of  Mr.  Davis 
and  of  Mr.  Wade,  who  had  called  the  bill  up  in  the 
Senate,  at  seeing  their  work  thus  brought  to  nothing, 
could  not  be  restrained ;  and  together  they  signed  and 
published  in  the  New  York  "Tribune"  of  August  5 
the  most  vigorous  attack  ever  directed  against  the 
President  from  his  own  party;  insinuating  that  only 
the  lowest  motives  dictated  his  action,  since  by  refusing 
to  sign  the  bill  he  held  the  electoral  votes  of  the  rebel 
States  at  his  personal  dictation;  calling  his  approval 
of  the  bill  of  Congress  as  a  very  proper  plan  for  any 
State  choosing  to  adopt  it,  a  "studied  outrage" ;  and  ad 
monishing  the  people  to  "consider  the  remedy  of  these 


RESIGNATION   OF  MR.   CHASE       457 

usurpations,  and,  having  found  it,"  to  "fearlessly  ex 
ecute  it." 

Congress  had  already  repealed  the  fugitive-slave 
law,  and  to  the  voters  at  large,  who  joyfully  accepted 
the  emancipation  proclamation,  it  mattered  very  little 
whether  the  "institution"  came  to  its  inevitable  end,  in 
the  fragments  of  territory  where  it  yet  remained,  by 
virtue  of  congressional  act  or  executive  decree.  This 
tempest  over  the  method  of  reconstruction  had,  there 
fore,  little  bearing  on  the  presidential  campaign,  and 
appealed  more  to  individual  critics  of  the  President 
than  to  the  mass  of  the  people. 

Mr.  Chase  entered  in  his  diary:  "The  President 
pocketed  the  great  bill.  .  .  .  He  did  not  venture 
to  veto,  and  so  put  it  in  his  pocket.  It  was  a  con 
demnation  of  his  amnesty  proclamation  and  of  his 
general  policy  of  reconstruction,  rejecting  the  idea  of 
possible  reconstruction  with  slavery,  which  neither 
the  President  nor  his  chief  advisers  have,  in  my  opin 
ion,  abandoned."  Mr.  Chase  was  no  longer  one  of 
the  chief  advisers.  After  his  withdrawal  from  his 
hopeless  contest  for  the  presidency,  his  sentiments  tow 
ard  Mr.  Lincoln  took  on  a  tinge  of  bitterness  which 
increased  until  their  friendly  association  in  the  public 
service  became  no  longer  possible;  and  on  June  30  he 
sent  the  President  his  resignation,  which  was  accepted. 
There  is  reason  to  believe  that  he  did  not  expect  such 
a  prompt  severing  of  their  official  relations,  since  more 
than  once,  in  the  months  of  friction  which  preceded 
this  culmination,  he  had  used  a  threat  to  resign  as 
means  to  carry  some  point  in  controversy. 

Mr.  Lincoln,  on  accepting  his  resignation,  sent  the 
name  of  David  Tod  of  Ohio  to  the  Senate  as  his  suc 
cessor;  but,  receiving  a  telegram  from  Mr.  Tod  de 
clining  on  the  plea  of  ill  health,  substituted  that  of 


458  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

William  Pitt  Fessenden,  chairman  of  the  Senate  Com 
mittee  on  Finance,  whose  nomination  was  instantly 
confirmed  and  commanded  general  approval. 

Horace  Greeley,  editor  of  the  powerful  New  York 
"Tribune,"  had  become  one  of  those  patriots  whose  dis 
couragement  and  discontent  led  them,  during  the  sum 
mer  of  1864,  to  give  ready  hospitality  to  any  sugges 
tions  to  end  the  war.  In  July  he  wrote  to  the  President, 
forwarding  the  letter  of  one  "Wm.  Cornell  Jewett  of 
Colorado,"  which  announced  the  arrival  in  Canada  of 
two  ambassadors  from  Jefferson  Davis  with  full  pow 
ers  to  negotiate  a  peace.  Mr.  Greeley  urged,  in  his 
over-fervid^  letter  of  transmittal,  that  the  President 
make  overtures  on  the  following  plan  of  adjustment: 
First.  The  Union  to  be  restored  and  declared  perpet 
ual.  Second.  Slavery  to  be  utterly  and  forever  abol 
ished.  Third.  A  complete  amnesty  for  all  political  of 
fenses.  Fourth.  Payment  of  four  hundred  million 
dollars  to  the  slave  States,  pro  rata,  for  their  slaves. 
Fifth.  Slave  States  to  be  represented  in  proportion  to 
their  total  population.  Sixth.  A  national  convention 
to  be  called  at  once. 

Though  Mr.  Lincoln  had  no  faith  in  Jewett's  story, 
and  doubted  whether  the  embassy  had  any  existence, 
he  determined  to  take  immediate  action  on  this  proposi 
tion.  He  felt  the  unreasonableness  and  injustice  of  Mr. 
Greeley's  letter,  which  in  effect  charged  his  adminis 
tration  with  a  cruel  disinclination  to  treat  with  the 
rebels,  and  resolved  to  convince  him  at  least,  and  per 
haps  others,  that  there  was  no  foundation  for  these 
reproaches.  So  he  arranged  that  the  witness  of  his 
willingness  to  listen  to  any  overtures  that  might  come 
from  the  South  should  be  Mr.  Greeley  himself,  and 
answering  his  letter  at  once  on  July  9,  said : 

"If  you  can  find  any  person,  anywhere,  professing 


GREELEY  PEACE  MISSION  459 

to  have  any  proposition  of  Jefferson  Davis  in  writing, 
for  peace,  embracing  the  restoration  of  the  Union  and 
abandonment  of  slavery,  whatever  else  it  embraces,  say 
to  him  he  may  come  to  me  with  you,  and  that  if  he 
really  brings  such  proposition  he  shall  at  the  least  have 
safe  conduct. with  the  paper  (and  without  publicity, 
if  he  chooses)  to  the  point  where  you  shall  have  met 
him.  The  same  if  there  be  two  or  more  persons." 

This  ready  acquiescence  evidently  surprised  and 
somewhat  embarrassed  Mr.  Greeley,  who  replied  by 
several  letters  of  different  dates,  but  made  no  motion 
to  produce  his  commissioners.  At  last,  on  the  fifteenth, 
to  end  a  correspondence  which  promised  to  be  indefi 
nitely  prolonged,  the  President  telegraphed  him :  "I 
was  not  expecting  you  to  send  me  a  letter,  but  to  bring 
me  a  man  or  men."  Mr.  Greeley  then  went  to  Niagara, 
and  wrote  from  there  to  the  alleged  commissioners, 
Clement  C.  Clay  and  James  P.  Holcombe,  offering  to 
conduct  them  to  Washington,  but  neglecting  to  men 
tion  the  two  conditions — restoration  of  the  Union 
and  abandonment  of  slavery — laid  down  in  Mr.  Lin 
coln's  note  of  the  ninth  and  repeated  by  him  on  the 
fifteenth.  Even  with  this  great  advantage,  Clay  and 
Holcombe  felt  themselves  too  devoid  of  credentials  to 
accept  Mr.  Greeley's  offer,  but  replied  that  they  could 
easily  get  credentials,  or  that  other  agents  could  be 
accredited,  if  they  could  be  sent  to  Richmond  armed 
with  "the  circumstances  disclosed  in  this  correspon 
dence." 

This,  of  course,  meant  that  Mr.  Lincoln  should  take 
the  initiative  in  suing  the  Richmond  authorities  for 
peace  on  terms  proposed  by  them.  The  essential  im 
possibility  of  these  terms  was  not,  however,  apparent 
to  Mr.  Greeley,  who  sent  them  on  to  Washington,  so 
liciting  fresh  instructions.  With  unwearied  patience, 


460  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Mr.  Lincoln  drew  up  a  final  paper,  "To  Whom  it  may 
Concern,"  formally  restating  his  position,  and  de 
spatched  Major  Hay  with  it  to  Niagara.  This  ended 
the  conference;  the  Confederates  charging  the  Presi 
dent  through  the  newspapers  with  a  "sudden  and  en 
tire  change  of  views" ;  while  Mr.  Greeley,  being  at 
tacked  by  his  colleagues  of  the  press  for  his  action, 
could  defend  himself  only  by  implied  censure  of  the 
President,  utterly  overlooking  the  fact  that  his  own 
original  letter  had  contained  the  identical  propositions 
Mr.  Lincoln  insisted  upon. 

The  discussion  grew  so  warm  that  both  he  and  his 
assailants  at  last  joined  in  a  request  to  Mr.  Lincoln 
to  permit  the  publication  of  the  correspondence.  This 
was,  of  course,  an  excellent  opportunity  for  the  Presi 
dent  to  vindicate  his  own  proceeding.  But  he  rarely 
looked  at  such  matters  from  the  point  of  view  of  per 
sonal  advantage,  and  he  feared  that  the  passionate, 
almost  despairing  appeals  of  the  most  prominent  Re 
publican  editor  of  the  North  for  peace  at  any  cost, 
disclosed  in  the  correspondence,  would  deepen  the 
gloom  in  the  public  mind  and  have  an  injurious  effect 
upon  the  Union  cause.  The  spectacle  of  the  veteran 
journalist,  who  was  justly  regarded  as  the  leading  con 
troversial  writer  on  the  antislavery  side,  ready  to  sacri 
fice  everything  for  peace,  and  frantically  denouncing 
the  government  for  refusing  to  surrender  the  contest, 
would  have  been,  in  its  effect  upon  public  opinion,  a  dis 
aster  equal  to  the  loss  of  a  great  battle.  He  therefore 
proposed  to  Mr.  Greeley,  in  case  the  letters  were  pub 
lished,  to  omit  some  of  the  most  vehement  passages; 
and  took  Mr.  Greeley's  refusal  to  assent  to  this  as  a  veto 
on  their  publication. 

It  was  characteristic  of  him  that,  seeing  the  temper 
in  which  Mr.  Greeley  regarded  the  transaction,  he 


JAQUESS-GILMORE  MISSION         461 

dropped  the  matter  and  submitted  in  silence  to  the  mis 
representations  to  which  he  was  subjected  by  reason  of 
it.  Some  thought  he  erred  in  giving  any  hearing  to 
the  rebels ;  some  criticized  his  choice  of  a  commissioner ; 
and  the  opposition  naturally  made  the  most  of  his  con 
ditions  of  negotiation,  and  accused  him  of  embarking 
in  a  war  of  extermination  in  the  interests  of  the  negro. 
Though  making  no  public  effort  to  set  himself  right, 
he  was  keenly  alive  to  their  attitude.  To  a  friend  he 
wrote : 

"Saying  reunion  and  abandonment  of  slavery  would 
be  considered,  if  offered,  is  not  saying  that  nothing 
else  or  less  would  be  considered,  if  offered. 
Allow  me  to  remind  you  that  no  one,  having  control 
of  the  rebel  armies,  or,  in  fact,  having  any  influence 
whatever  in  the  rebellion,  has  offered,  or  intimated, 
a  willingness  to  a  restoration  of  the  Union,  in  any 
event,  or  on  any  condition  whatever.  ...  If  Jef 
ferson  Davis  wishes  for  himself,  or  for  the  benefit  of 
his  friends  at  the  North,  to  know  what  I  would  do 
if  he  were  to  offer  peace  and  reunion,  saying  nothing 
about  slavery,  let  him  try  me." 

If  the  result  of  Mr.  Greeley's  Niagara  efforts  left 
any  doubt  that  peace  was  at  present  unattainable,  the 
fact  was  demonstrated  beyond  question  by  the  pub 
lished  report  of  another  unofficial  and  volunteer  nego 
tiation  which  was  proceeding  at  the  same  time.  In 
May,  1863,  James  F.  Jaquess,  D.D.,  a  Methodist  cler 
gyman  of  piety  and  religious  enthusiasm,  who  had 
been  appointed  by  Governor  Yates  colonel  of  an  Illi 
nois  regiment,  applied  for  permission  to  go  South,  urg 
ing  that  by  virtue  of  his  church  relations  he  could, 
within  ninety  days,  obtain  acceptable  terms  of  peace 
from  the  Confederates.  The  military  superiors  to 
whom  he  submitted  the  request  forwarded  it  to  Mr. 


462  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Lincoln  with  a  favorable  indorsement;  and  the  Presi 
dent  replied,  consenting  that  they  grant  him  a  fur 
lough,  if  they  saw  fit,  but  saying : 

"He  cannot  go  with  any  government  authority  what 
ever.  This  is  absolute  and  imperative." 

Eleven  days  later  he  was  back  again  within  Union 
lines,  claiming  to  have  valuable  "unofficial"  propo 
sals  for  peace.  President  Lincoln  paid  no  attention 
to  his  request  for  an  interview,  and  in  course  of  time 
he  returned  to  his  regiment.  Nothing  daunted,  how 
ever,  a  year  later  he  applied  for  and  received  permis 
sion  to  repeat  his  visit,  this  time  in  company  with  J.  R. 
Gilmore,  a  lecturer  and  writer,  but,  as  before,  expressly 
without  instruction  or  authority  from  Mr.  Lincoln. 
They  went  to  Richmond,  and  had  an  extended  inter 
view  with  Mr.  Davis,  during  which  they  proposed  to 
him  a  plan  of  adjustment  as  visionary  as  it  was  un 
authorized,  its  central  feature  being  a  general  election 
to  be  held  over  the  whole  country,  North  and  South, 
within  sixty  days,  on  the  two  propositions, — peace  with 
disunion  and  Southern  independence,  or  peace  with 
Union,  emancipation,  no  confiscation,  and  universal 
amnesty, — the  majority  vote  to  decide,  and  the  govern 
ments  at  Washington  and  Richmond  to  be  finally 
bound  by  the  decision. 

The  interview  resulted  in  nothing  but  a  renewed  dec 
laration  from  Mr.  Davis  that  he  would  fight  for  sep 
aration  to  the  bitter  end — a  declaration  which,  on  the 
whole,  was  of  service  to  the  Union  cause,  since,  to  a 
great  extent,  it  stopped  the  clamor  of  the  peace  faction- 
ists  during  the  presidential  campaign.  Not  entirely, 
however.  There  was  still  criticism  enough  to  induce 
Henry  J.  Raymond,  chairman  of  the  executive  com 
mittee  of  the  Republican  party,  to  write  a  letter  on 
August  22,  suggesting  to  Mr.  Lincoln  that  he  ought 


THE  POLITICAL  OUTLOOK  463 

to  appoint  a  commission  in  due  form  to  make  proffers 
of  peace  to  Davis  on  the  sole  condition  of  acknowledg 
ing  the  supremacy  of  the  Constitution ;  all  other  ques 
tions  to  be  settled  in  a  convention  of  the  people  of  all 
the  States. 

Mr.  Lincoln  answered  this  patiently  and  courteously,, 
framing,  to  give  point  to  his  argument,  an  experimental 
draft  of  instructions  with  which  he  proposed,  in  case 
such  proffers  were  made,  to  send  Mr.  Raymond  himself 
to  the  rebel  authorities.  On  seeing  these  in  black  and 
white,  Raymond,  who  had  come  to  Washington  to 
urge  his  project,  readily  agreed  with  the  President 
and  Secretaries  Seward,  Stanton,  and  Fessenden,  that 
to  carry  it  out  would  be  worse  than  losing  the  presi 
dential  contest :  it  would  be  ignominiously  surrendering 
it  in  advance. 

"Nevertheless,"  wrote  an  inmate  of  the  White 
House,  "the  visit  of  himself  and  committee  here  did 
great  good.  They  found  the  President  and  cabinet 
much  better  informed  than  themselves,  and  went  home 
encouraged  and  cheered." 

The  Democratic  managers  had  called  the  national 
convention  of  their  party  to  meet  on  the  fourth  of  July, 
1864;  but  after  the  nomination  of  Fremont  at  Cleve 
land,  and  of  Lincoln  at  Baltimore,  it  was  thought  pru 
dent  to  postpone  it  to  a  later  date,  in  the  hope  that 
something  in  the  chapter  of  accidents  might  arise  to  the 
advantage  of  the  opposition.  It  appeared  for  a  while 
as  if  this  manceuver  were  to  be  successful.  The  mili 
tary  situation  was  far  from  satisfactory.  The  terrible 
fighting  of  Grant's  army  in  Virginia  had  profoundly 
shocked  and  depressed  the  country;  and  its  movement 
upon  Petersburg,  so  far  without  decisive  results,  had 
contributed  little  hope  or  encouragement.  The  cam 
paign  of  Sherman  in  Georgia  gave  as  yet  no  posi- 


464  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

tive  assurance  of  the  brilliant  results  it  afterward  at 
tained.  The  Confederate  raid  into  Maryland  and 
Pennsylvania  in  July  was  the  cause  of  great  annoyance 
and  exasperation. 

This  untoward  state  of  things  in  the  field  of  military 
operations  found  its  exact  counterpart  in  the  political 
campaign.  Several  circumstances  contributed  to  di 
vide  and  discourage  the  administration  party.  The 
resignation  of  Mr.  Chase  had  seemed  to  not  a  few 
leading  Republicans  a  presage  of  disintegration  in 
the  government.  Mr.  Greeley's  mission  at  Niagara 
Falls  had  unsettled  and  troubled  the  minds  of  many. 
The  Democrats,  not  having  as  yet  appointed  a  candi 
date  or  formulated  a  platform,  were  free  to  devote  all 
their  leisure  to  attacks  upon  the  administration.  The 
rebel  emissaries  in  Canada,  being  in  thorough  concert 
with  the  leading  peace  men  of  the  North,  redoubled 
their  efforts  to  disturb  the  public  tranquillity,  and  not 
without  success.  In  the  midst  of  these  discouraging 
circumstances  the  manifesto  of  Wade  and  Davis  had 
appeared  to  add  its  depressing  influence  to  the  general 
gloom. 

Mr.  Lincoln  realized  to  the  full  the  tremendous  is 
sues  of  the  campaign.  Asked  in  August  by  a  friend 
who  noted  his  worn  looks,  if  he  could  not  go  away  for 
a  fortnight's  rest,  he  replied : 

"I  cannot  fly  from  my  thoughts — my  solicitude  for 
this  great  country  follows  me  wherever  I  go.  I  do  not 
think  it  is  personal  vanity  or  ambition,  though  I  am  not 
free  from  these  infirmities,  but  I  cannot  but  feel  that 
the  weal  or  woe  of  this  great  nation  will  be  decided 
in  November.  There  is  no  program  offered  by  any 
wing  of  the  Democratic  party,  but  that  must  result  in 
the  permanent  destruction  of  the  Union." 

"But,  Mr.  President,"  his  friend  objected,  "General 


THE  POLITICAL  OUTLOOK          465 

McClellan  is  in  favor  of  crushing  out  this  rebellion  by 
force.  He  will  be  the  Chicago  candidate." 

"Sir,  the  slightest  knowledge  of  arithmetic  will  prove 
to  any  man  that  the  rebel  armies  cannot  be  destroyed 
by  Democratic  strategy.  It  would  sacrifice  all  the 
white  men  of  the  North  to  do  it.  There  are  now  in 
the  service  of  the  United  States  nearly  one  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  able-bodied  colored  men,  most  of 
them  under  arms,  defending  and  acquiring  Union  ter 
ritory.  The  Democratic  strategy  demands  that  these 
forces  be  disbanded,  and  that  the  masters  be  conciliated 
by  restoring  them  to  slavery.  .  .  .  You  cannot 
conciliate  the  South  if  you  guarantee  to  them  ultimate 
success;  and  the  experience  of  the  present  war  proves 
their  success  is  inevitable  if  you  fling  the  compulsory 
labor  of  millions  of  black  men  into  their  side  of  the 
scale.  •  .  Abandon  all  the  posts  now  garrisoned 

by  black  men,  take  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
men  from  our  side  and  put  them  in  the  battle-field  or 
corn-field  against  us,  and  we  would  be  compelled  to 
abandon  the  war  in  three  weeks.  .  .  .  My  en 
emies  pretend  I  am  now  carrying  on  this  war  for  the 
sole  purpose  of  abolition.  So  long  as  I  am  President 
it  shall  be  carried  on  for  the  sole  purpose  of  restor 
ing  the  Union.  But  no  human  power  can  subdue  this 
rebellion  without  the  use  of  the  emancipation  policy 
and  every  other  policy  calculated  to  weaken  the  moral 
and  physical  forces  of  the  rebellion.  .  .  .  Let  my 
enemies  prove  to  the  country  that  the  destruction  of 
slavery  is  not  necessary  to  a  restoration  of  the  Union. 
I  will  abide  the  issue." 

The  political  situation  grew  still  darker.  When  at 
last,  toward  the  end  of  August,  the  general  gloom  had 
enveloped  even  the  President  himself,  his  action  was 
most  original  and  characteristic.  Feeling  that  the 

30 


466  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

campaign  was  going  against  him,  he  made  up  his  mind 
deliberately  as  to  the  course  he  should  pursue,  and  laid 
down  for  himself  the  action  demanded  by  his  convic 
tion  of  duty.  He  wrote  on  August  23  the  following 
memorandum : 

"This  morning,  as  for  some  days  past,  it  seems  ex 
ceedingly  probable  that  this  administration  will  not  be 
reflected.  Then  it  will  be  my  duty  to  so  cooperate 
with  the  President-elect  as  to  save  the  Union  between 
the  election  and  the  inauguration,  as  he  will  have  se 
cured  his  election  on  such  ground  that  he  cannot  pos 
sibly  save  it  afterwards." 

He  then  folded  and  pasted  the  sheet  in  such  manner 
that  its  contents  could  not  be  read,  and  as  the  cabinet 
came  together  he  handed  this  paper  to  each  member 
successively,  requesting  them  to  write  their  names 
across  the  back  of  it.  In  this  peculiar  fashion  he 
pledged  himself  and  the  administration  to  accept 
loyally  the  anticipated  verdict  of  the  people  against 
him,  and  to  do  their  utmost  to  save  the  Union  in 
the  brief  remainder  of  his  term  of  office.  He  gave 
no  intimation  to  any  member  of  his  cabinet  of  the 
nature  of  the  paper  they  had  signed  until  after  his 
reelection. 

The  Democratic  convention  was  finally  called  to 
meet  in  Chicago  on  August  29.  Much  had  been  ex 
pected  by  the  peace  party  from  the  strength  and  au 
dacity  of  its  adherents  in  the  Northwest;  and,  indeed, 
the  day  of  the  meeting  of  the  convention  was  actually 
the  date  appointed  by  rebel  emissaries  in  Canada  for 
an  outbreak  which  should  effect  that  revolution  in  the 
northwestern  States  which  had  long  been  their  chimer 
ical  dream.  This  scheme  of  the  American  Knights, 
however,  was  discovered  and  guarded  against  through 
the  usual  treachery  of  some  of  their  members;  and  it 


McCLELLAN   NOMINATED  467 

is  doubtful  if  the  Democrats  reaped  any  real,  perma 
nent  advantage  from  the  delay  of  their  convention. 

On  coming  together,  the  only  manner  in  which  the 
peace  men  and  war  Democrats  could  arrive'  at  an  agree 
ment  was  by  mutual  deception.  The  war  Democrats, 
led  by  the  delegation  from  New  York,  were  working 
for  a  military  candidate;  while  the  peace  Democrats, 
under  the  leadership  of  Vallandigham,  who  had  re 
turned  from  Canada  and  was  allowed  to  remain  at 
large  through  the  half-contemptuous  and  half-calcu 
lated  leniency  of  the  government  he  defied,  bent  all 
their  energies  to  a  clear  statement  of  their  principles 
in  the  platform. 

Both  got  what  they  desired.  General  McClellan  was 
nominated  on  the  first  ballot,  and  Vallandigham  wrote 
the  only  plank  worth  quoting  in  the  platform.  It  as 
serted  :  "That  after  four  years  of  failure  to  restore 
the  Union  by  the  experiment  of  war,  during  which 
.  the  Constitution  itself  has  been  disregarded 
in  every  part,"  public  welfare  demands  "that  imme 
diate  efforts  be  made  for  a  cessation  of  hostilities."  It 
is  altogether  probable  that  this  distinct  proposition  of 
surrender  to  the  Confederates  might  have  been  modi 
fied  or  defeated  in  full  convention  if  the  war  Demo 
crats  had  had  the  courage  of  their  convictions;  but 
they  were  so  intent  upon  the  nomination  of  McClellan, 
that  they  considered  the  platform  of  secondary  im 
portance,  and  the  fatal  resolutions  were  adopted  with 
out  debate. 

Mr.  Vallandigham,  having  thus  taken  possession  of 
the  convention,  next  adopted  the  candidate,  and  put 
the  seal  of  his  sinister  approval  on  General  McClellan 
by  moving  that  his  nomination  be  made  unanimous, 
which  was  done  amid  great  cheering.  George  H. 
Pendleton  was  nominated  for  Vice-President,  and  the 


468  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

convention  adjourned — not  sine  die,  as  is  customary, 
but  "subject  to  be  called  at  any  time  and  place  the  ex 
ecutive  national  committee  shall  designate."  The  mo 
tives  of  this 'action  were  not  avowed,  but  it  was  taken 
as  a  significant  warning  that  the  leaders  of  the  Demo 
cratic  party  held  themselves  ready  for  any  extraor 
dinary  measures  which  the  exigencies  of  the  time  might 
provoke  or  invite. 

The  New-Yorkers,  however,  had  the  last  word,  for 
Governor  Seymour,  in  his  letter  as  chairman  of  the 
committee  to  inform  McClellan  of  his  nomination,  as 
sured  him  that  "those  for  whom  we  speak  were  ani 
mated  with  the  most  earnest,  devoted,  and  prayerful 
desire  for  the  salvation  of  the  American  Union";  and 
the  general,  knowing  that  the  poison  of  death  was  in 
the  platform,  took  occasion  in  his  letter  of  acceptance 
to  renew  his  assurances  of  devotion  to  the  Union,  the 
Constitution,  the  laws,  and  the  flag  of  his  country. 
After  having  thus  absolutely  repudiated  the  platform 
upon  which  he  was  nominated,  he  coolly  concluded : 

"Believing  that  the  views  here  expressed  are  those 
of  the  convention  and  the  people  you  represent,  I  accept 
the  nomination." 

His  only  possible  chance  of  success  lay,  of  course,  in 
his  war  record.  His  position  as  a  candidate  on  a  plat 
form  of  dishonorable  peace  would  have  been  no  less  des 
perate  than  ridiculous.  But  the  stars  in  their  courses 
fought  against  the  Democratic  candidates.  Even  be 
fore  the  convention  that  nominated  them,  Farragut 
had  won  the  splendid  victory  of  Mobile  Bay;  during 
the  very  hours  when  the  streets  of  Chicago  were  blaz 
ing  with  Democratic  torches,  Hood  was  preparing  to 
evacuate  Atlanta ;  and  the  same  newspaper  that  printed 
Vallandigham's  peace  platform  announced  Sherman's 
entrance  into  the  manufacturing  metropolis  of  Georgia. 


LINCOLN    REFLECTED  469 

The  darkest  hour  had  passed ;  dawn  was  at  hand,  and 
amid  the  thanksgivings  of  a  grateful  people,  and  the 
joyful  salutes  of  great  guns,  the  presidential  cam 
paign  began. 

When  the  country  awoke  to  the  true  significance  of 
the  Chicago  platform,  the  successes  of  Sherman  excited 
the  enthusiasm  of  the  people,  and  the  Unionists,  arous 
ing  from  their  midsummer  languor,  began  to  show 
their  confidence  in  the  Republican  candidate,  the 
hopelessness  of  all  efforts  to  undermine  him  became 
evident. 

The  electoral  contest  began  with  the  picket  firing 
in  Vermont  and  Maine  in  September,  was  continued 
in  what  might  be  called  the  grand  guard  fighting  in 
October  in  the  great  States  of  Pennsylvania,  Ohio,  and 
Indiana,  and  the  final  battle  took  place  all  along  the 
line  on  November  8.  To  Mr.  Lincoln  this  was  one  of 
the  most  solemn  days  of  his  life.  Assured  of  his  per 
sonal  success,  and  made  devoutly  confident  by  the 
military  successes  of  the  last  few  weeks  that  the  day  of 
peace  and  the  reestablishment  of  the  Union  was  at  hand, 
he  felt  no  elation,  and  no  sense  of  triumph  over  his 
opponents.  The  thoughts  that  filled  his  mind  were 
expressed  in  the  closing  sentences  of  the  little  speech  he 
made  in  response  to  a  group  of  serenaders  that  greeted 
him  when,  in  the  early  morning  hours,  he  left  the  War 
Department,  where  he  had  gone  on  the  evening  of  elec 
tion  to  receive  the  returns  : 

"I  am  thankful  to  God  for  this  approval  of  the  peo 
ple;  but,  while  deeply  grateful  for  this  mark  of  their 
confidence  in  me,  if  I  know  my  heart,  my  gratitude  is 
free  from  any  taint  of  personal  triumph.  I  do  not 
impugn  the  motives  of  any  one  opposed  to  me.  It  is 
no  pleasure  to  me  to  triumph  over  any  one,  but  I  give 
thanks  to  the  Almighty  for  this  evidence  of  the  peo- 


470  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

pie's  resolution  to  stand  by  free  government  and  the 
rights  of  humanity." 

Lincoln  and  Johnson  received  a  popular  majority  of 
411,281,  and  two  hundred  and  twelve  out  of  two  hun 
dred  and  thirty-three  electoral  votes,  only  those  of  New 
Jersey,  Delaware,  and  Kentucky,  twenty-one  in  all, 
being  cast  for  McClellan.  In  his  annual  message  to 
Congress,  which  met  on  December  5,  President  Lin 
coln  gave  the  best  summing  up  of  the  results  of  the 
election  that  has  ever  been  written : 

"The  purpose  of  the  people  within  the  loyal  States 
to  maintain  the  integrity  of  the  Union  was  never  more 
firm  nor  more  nearly  unanimous  than  now. 
No  candidate  for  any  office  whatever,  high  or  low,  has 
ventured  to  seek  votes  on  the  avowal  that  he  was  for 
giving  up  the  Union.  There  have  been  much  im 
pugning  of  motives  and  much  heated  controversy  as  to 
the  proper  means  and  best  mode  of  advancing  the 
Union  cause;  but  on  the  distinct  issue  of  Union  or  no 
Union  the  politicians  have  shown  their  instinctive 
knowledge  that  there  is  no  diversity  among  the  peo 
ple.  In  affording  the  people  the  fair  opportunity  of 
showing  one  to  another  and  to  the  world  this  firmness 
and  unanimity  of  purpose,  the  election  has  been  of  vast 
value  to  the  national  cause." 

On  the  day  of  election  General  McClellan  resigned 
his  commission  in  the  army,  and  the  place  thus  made 
vacant  was  filled  by  the  appointment  of  General  Philip 
H.  Sheridan,  a  fit  type  and  illustration  of  the  turn  in 
the  tide  of  affairs,  which  was  to  sweep  from  that  time 
rapidly  onward  to  the  great  decisive  national  triumph. 


XXXIII 

The  Thirteenth  Amendment — The  President's  Speech  on 
its  Adoption — The  Two  Constitutional  Amendments 
of  Lincoln's  Term — Lincoln  on  Peace  and  Slavery  in 
his  Annual  Message  of  December  6,  1864 — Blair's 
Mexican  Project — The  Hampton  Roads  Conference 

A  JOINT  resolution  proposing  an  amendment  to  the 
Constitution  prohibiting  slavery  throughout  the 
United  States  had  passed  the  Senate  on  April  8,  1864, 
but  had  failed  of  the  necessary  two-thirds  vote  in  the 
House.  The  two  most  vital  thoughts  which  animated 
the  Baltimore  convention  when  it  met  in  June  had  been 
the  renomination  of  Mr.  Lincoln  and  the  success  of 
this  constitutional  amendment.  The  first  was  recog 
nized  as  a  popular  decision  needing  only  the  formality 
of  an  announcement  by  the  convention;  and  the  full 
emphasis  of  speech  and  resolution  had  therefore  been 
centered  on  the  latter  as  the  dominant  and  aggressive 
reform  upon  which  the  party  would  stake  its  politi 
cal  fortunes  in  the  presidential  campaign.  Mr.  Lin 
coln  had  himself  suggested  to  Mr.  Morgan  the  wisdom 
of  sounding  that  key-note  in  his  opening  speech  before 
the  convention;  and  the  great  victory  gained  at  the 
polls  in  November  not  only  demonstrated  his  sagacity, 
but  enabled  him  to  take  up  the  question  with  confidence 
among  his  recommendations  to  Congress  in  the  an 
nual  message  of  December  6,  1864.  Relating  the  fate 
of  the  measure  at  the  preceding  session,  he  said  : 

"Without  questioning  the  wisdom  or  patriotism  of 

471 


472  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

those  who  stood  in  opposition,  I  venture  to  recommend 
the  reconsideration  and  passage  of  the  measure  at  the 
present  session.  Of  course  the  abstract  question  is 
not  changed,  but  an  intervening  election  shows,  almost 
certainly,  that  the  next  Congress  will  pass  the  measure 
if  this  does  not.  Hence  there  is  only  a  question  of  time 
as  to  when  the  proposed  amendment  will  go  to  the 
States  for  their  action.  And  as  it  is  to  so  go  at  all 
events,  may  we  not  agree  that  the  sooner  the  better? 
It  is  not  claimed  that  the  election  has  imposed  a  duty 
on  members  to  change  their  views  or  their  votes  any 
further  than,  as  an  additional  element  to  be  considered, 
their  judgment  may  be  affected  by  it.  It  is  the  voice 
of  the  people,  now  for  the  first  time  heard  upon  the 
question.  In  a  great  national  crisis  like  ours,  una 
nimity  of  action  among  those  seeking  a  common  end 
is  very  desirable — almost  indispensable.  And  yet  no 
approach  to  such  unanimity  is  attainable  unless  some 
deference  shall  be  paid  to  the  will  of  the  majority,  sim 
ply  because  it  is  the  will  of  the  majority.  In  this  case 
the  common  end  is  the  maintenance  of  the  Union ;  and 
among  the  means  to  secure  that  end,  such  will,  through 
the  election,  is  most  clearly  declared  in  favor  of  such 
constitutional  amendment." 

The  joint  resolution  was  called  up  in  the  House  on 
January  6,  1865,  and  general  discussion  followed  from 
time  to  time,  occupying  perhaps  half  the  days  of  that 
month.  As  at  the  previous  session,  the  Republicans  all 
favored,  while  the  Democrats  mainly  opposed  it;  but 
important  exceptions  among  the  latter  showed  what 
immense  gains  the  proposition  had  made  in  popular 
opinion  and  in  congressional  willingness  to  recognize 
and  embody  it.  The  logic  of  events  had  become  more 
powerful  than  party  creed  or  strategy.  For  fifteen 
years  the  Democratic  party  had  stood  as  sentinel  and 


THIRTEENTH  AMENDMENT          473 

bulwark  to  slavery,  and  yet,  despite  its  alliance  and 
championship,  the  "peculiar  institution"  was  being  con 
sumed  in  the  fire  of  war.  It  had  withered  in  popular 
elections,  been  paralyzed  by  confiscation  laws,  crushed 
by  executive  decrees,  trampled  upon  by  marching 
Union  armies.  More  notable  than  all,  the  agony  of 
dissolution  had  come  upon  it  in  its  final  stronghold— 
the  constitutions  of  the  slave  States.  Local  public 
opinion  had  throttled  it  in  West  Virginia,  in  Missouri, 
in  Arkansas,  in  Louisiana,  in  Maryland,  and  the  same 
spirit  of  change  was  upon  Tennessee,  and  even  show 
ing  itself  in  Kentucky.  The  Democratic  party  did  not, 
and  could  not,  shut  its  eyes  to  the  accomplished  facts. 

The  issue  was  decided  on  the  afternoon  of  January 
31,  1865.  The  scene  was  one  of  unusual  interest.  The 
galleries  were  filled  to  overflowing,  and  members 
watched  the  proceedings  with  unconcealed  solicitude. 
"Up  to  noon,"  said  a  contemporaneous  report,  "the 
pro-slavery  party  are  said  to  have  been  confident  of 
defeating  the  amendment;  and  after  that  time  had 
passed,  one  of  the  most  earnest  advocates  of  the  mea 
sure  said :  "T  is  the  toss  of  a  copper.' '  At  four 
o'clock  the  House  came  to  a  final  vote,  and  the  roll- 
call  showed :  yeas,  one  hundred  and  nineteen ;  nays, 
fifty-six;  not  voting,  eight.  Scattering  murmurs  of 
applause  followed  affirmative  votes  from  several  Dem 
ocratic  members;  but  when  the  Speaker  finally  an 
nounced  the  result,  members  on  the  Republican  side 
of  the  House  sprang  to  their  feet,  and,  regardless  of 
parliamentary  rules,  applauded  with  cheers  and  hand- 
clappings — an  exhibition  of  enthusiasm  quickly  echoed 
by  the  spectators  in  the  crowded  galleries,  where  wav 
ing  of  hats  and  handkerchiefs  and  similar  demonstra 
tions  of  joy  lasted  for  several  minutes. 

A  salute  of  one  hundred  guns  soon  made  the  oc- 


474  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

casion  the  subject  of  comment  and  congratulation 
throughout  the  city.  On  the  following  night  a  con 
siderable  procession  marched  with  music  to  the  Ex 
ecutive  Mansion  to  carry  popular  greetings  to  the 
President.  In  response  to  their  calls  he  appeared  at  a 
window  and  made  a  brief  speech,  of  which  only  an 
abstract  report  was  preserved,  but  which  is  neverthe 
less  important  as  showing  the  searching  analysis  of 
cause  and  effect  this  question  had  undergone  in  his 
mind,  the  deep  interest  he  felt  in  it,  and  the  far-reach 
ing  consequences  he  attached  to  the  measure  and  its 
success : 

"The  occasion  was  one  of  congratulation  "to  the 
country  and  to  the  whole  world.  But  there  is  a  task 
yet  before  us — to  go  forward  and  have  consummated 
by  the  votes  of  the  States  that  which  Congress  had 
so  nobly  begun  yesterday.  He  had  the  honor  to  inform 
those  present  that  Illinois  had  already  to-day  done  the 
work.  Maryland  was  about  half  through,  but  he  felt 
proud  that  Illinois  was  a  little  ahead.  He  thought 
this  measure  was  a  very  fitting,  if  not  an  indispensable, 
adjunct  to  the  winding  up  of  the  great  difficulty.  He 
wished  the  reunion  of  all  the  States  perfected,  and  so 
effected  as  to  remove  all  causes  of  disturbance  in  the 
future ;  and  to  attain  this  end  it  was  necessary  that  the 
original  disturbing  cause  should,  if  possible,  be  rooted 
out.  He  thought  all  would  bear  him  witness  that  he 
had  never  shrunk  from  doing  all  that  he  could  to  erad 
icate  slavery,  by  issuing  an  emancipation  proclamation. 
But  that  proclamation  falls  far  short  of  what  the 
amendment  will  be  when  fully  consummated.  A  ques 
tion  might  be  raised  whether  the  proclamation  was  le 
gally  valid.  It  might  be  urged  that  it  only  aided  those 
that  came  into  our  lines,  and  that  it  was  inoperative  as 
to  those  who  did  not  give  themselves  up;  or  that  it 


THIRTEENTH  AMENDMENT          475 

would  have  no  effect  upon  the  children  of  slaves  born 
hereafter;  in  fact,  it  would  be  urged  that  it  did  not 
meet  the  evil.  But  this  amendment  is  a  king's  cure-all 
for  all  the  evils.  It  winds  the  whole  thing  up.  He 
would  repeat  that  it  was  the  fitting,  if  not  the  indispen 
sable,  adjunct  to  the  consummation  of  the  great  game 
we  are  playing." 

Widely  divergent  views  were  expressed  by  able  con 
stitutional  lawyers  as  to  what  would  constitute  a  valid 
ratification  of  the  Thirteenth  Amendment;  some  con 
tending  that  ratification  by  three  fourths  of  the  loyal 
States  would  be  sufficient,  others  that  three  fourths  of 
all  the  States,  whether  loyal  or  insurrectionary,  was 
necessary.  Mr.  Lincoln,  in  a  speech  on  Louisiana  re 
construction,  while  expressing  no  opinion  against  the 
first  proposition,  nevertheless  declared  with  great  ar 
gumentative  force  that  the  latter  "would  be  unques 
tioned  and  unquestionable" ;  and  this  view  appears  to 
have  governed  the  action  of  his  successor. 

As  Mr.  Lincoln  mentioned  with  just  pride,  Illinois 
was  the  first  State  to  ratify  the  amendment.  On  De 
cember  1 8,  1865,  Mr.  Seward,  who  remained  as  Sec 
retary  of  State  in  the  cabinet  of  President  Johnson, 
made  official  proclamation  that  the  legislatures  of 
twenty-seven  States,  constituting  three  fourths  of  the 
thirty-six  States  of  the  Union,  had  ratified  the  amend 
ment,  and  that  it  had  become  valid  as  a  part  of  the 
Constitution.  Four  of  the  States  constituting  this 
number — Virginia,  Louisiana,  Tennessee,  and  Arkan 
sas — were  those  whose  reconstruction  had  been  effected 
under  the  direction  of  President  Lincoln.  Six  more 
States  subsequently  ratified  the  amendment,  Texas 
ending  the  list  in  February,  1870. 

The  profound  political  transformation  which  the 
American  Republic  had  undergone  can  perhaps  best 


476  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

be  measured  by  contrasting  the  two  constitutional 
amendments  which  Congress  made  it  the  duty  of  the 
Lincoln  administration  to  submit  officially  to  the  States. 
The  first,  signed  by  President  Buchanan  as  one  of  his 
last  official  acts,  and  accepted  and  indorsed  by  Lincoln 
in  his  inaugural  address,  was  in  these  words : 

"No  amendment  shall  be  made  to  the  Constitution 
which  will  authorize  or  give  to  Congress  the  power 
to  abolish  or  interfere  within  any  State  with  the  do 
mestic  institutions  thereof,  including  that  of  persons 
held  to  labor  or  service  by  the  laws  of  said  State." 

Between  Lincoln's  inauguration  and  the  outbreak  of 
war,  the  Department  of  State  transmitted  this  amend 
ment  to  the  several  States  for  their  action ;  and  had  the 
South  shown  a  willingness  to  desist  from  secession 
and  accept  it  as  a  peace  offering,  there  is  little  doubt 
that  it  would  have  become  a  part  of  the  Constitution. 
But  the  thunder  of  Beauregard's  guns  drove  away  all 
possibility  of  such  a  ratification,  and  within  four  years 
the  Lincoln  administration  sent  forth  the  amendment 
of  1865,  sweeping  out  of  existence  by  one  sentence  the 
institution  to  which  it  had  in  its  first  proposal  offered 
a  virtual  claim  to  perpetual  recognition  and  tolerance. 
The  "new  birth  of  freedom"  which  Lincoln  invoked 
for  the  nation  in  his  Gettysburg  address,  was  accom 
plished. 

The  closing  paragraphs  of  President  Lincoln's  mes 
sage  to  Congress  of  December  6,  1864,  were  devoted 
to  a  summing  up  of  the  existing  situation.  The  verdict 
of  the  ballot-box  had  not  only  decided  the  continuance 
of  a  war  administration  and  war  policy,  but  renewed 
the  assurance  of  a  public  sentiment  to  sustain  its  pros 
ecution.  Inspired  by  this  majestic  manifestation  of 
the  popular  will,  he  was  able  to  speak  of  the  future  with 
hope  and  confidence.  But  with  characteristic  prudence 


ANNUAL  MESSAGE,   1864  477 

and  good  taste,  he  uttered  no  word  of  boasting,  and 
indulged  in  no  syllable  of  acrimony;  on  the  contrary, 
in  terms  of  fatherly  kindness  he  again  offered  the  re 
bellious  States  the  generous  conditions  he  had  pre 
viously  tendered  them. 

"The  national  resources,  then,  are  unexhausted,  and, 
as  we  believe,  inexhaustible.  The  public  purpose  to  re 
establish  and  maintain  the  national  authority  is  un 
changed,  and,  as  we  believe,  unchangeable.  The  man 
ner  of  continuing  the  effort  remains  to  choose.  On 
careful  consideration  of  all  the  evidence  accessible,  it 
seems  to  me  that  no  attempt  at  negotiation  with  the 
insurgent  leader  could  result  in  any  good.  He  would 
accept  nothing  short  of  severance  of  the  Union — pre 
cisely  what  we  will  not  and  cannot  give.  His  declara 
tions  to  this  effect  are  explicit  and  oft-repeated. 
.  What  is  true,  however,  of  him  who  heads  the 
insurgent  cause  is  not  necessarily  true  of  those  who 
follow.  Although  he  cannot  reaccept  the  Union,  they 
can.  Some  of  them,  we  know,  already  desire  peace 
and  reunion.  The  number  of  such  may  increase. 
They  can,  at  any  moment,  have  peace  simply  by  lay 
ing  down  their  arms  and  submitting  to  the  national 
authority  under  the  Constitution.  After  so  much, 
the  government  could  not,  if  it  would,  maintain  war 
against  them.  The  loyal  people  would  not  sustain  or 
allow  it.  If  questions  should  remain,  we  would  ad 
just  them  by  the  peaceful  means  of  legislation,  con 
ference,  courts,  and  votes,  operating  only  in  constitu 
tional  and  lawful  channels.  ...  In  presenting 
the  abandonment  of  armed  resistance  to  the  national 
authority,  on  the  part  of  the  insurgents,  as  the  only 
indispensable  condition  to  ending  the  war  on  the  part 
of  the  government,  I  retract  nothing  heretofore  said 
as  to  slavery.  I  repeat  the  declaration  made  a  year 


478  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

ago,  that  'While  I  remain  in  my  present  position  I 
shall  not  attempt  to  retract  or  modify  the  emancipation 
proclamation,  nor  shall  I  return  to  slavery  any  person 
who  is  free  by  the  terms  of  that  proclamation,  or  by  any 
of  the  acts  of  Congress.'  If  the  people  should,  by 
whatever  mode  or  means,  make  it  an  executive  duty 
to  reenslave  such  persons,  another,  and  not  I,  must 
be  their  instrument  to  perform  it.  In  stating  a  single 
condition  of  peace,  I  mean  simply  to  say  that  the  war 
will  cease  on  the  part  of  the  government  whenever 
it  shall  have  ceased  on  the  part  of  those  who  began  it." 
The  country  was  about  to  enter  upon  the  fifth  year 
of  actual  war;  but  all  indications  were  pointing  to  a 
speedy  collapse  of  the  rebellion.  This  foreshadowed 
disaster  to  the  Confederate  armies  gave  rise  to  an 
other  volunteer  peace  negotiation,  which,  from  the 
boldness  of  its  animating  thought  and  the  prominence 
of  its  actors,  assumes  a  special  importance.  The  vet 
eran  politician  Francis  P.  Blair,  Sr.,  who,  from  his 
long  political  and  personal  experience  in  Washington, 
knew,  perhaps  better  than  almost  any  one  else,  the 
individual  characters  and  tempers  of  Southern,  leaders, 
conceived  that  the  time  had  come  when  he  might  take 
up  the  role  of  successful  mediator  between  the  North 
and  the  South.  He  gave  various  hints  of  his  desire 
to  President  Lincoln,  but  received  neither  encourage 
ment  nor  opportunity  to  unfold  his  plans.  "Come  to 
me  after  Savannah  falls,"  was  Lincoln's  evasive  reply. 
On  the  surrender  of  that  city,  Mr.  Blair  hastened  to  put 
his  design  into  execution,  and  with  a  simple  card  from 
Mr.  Lincoln,  dated  December  28,  saying,  "Allow  the 
bearer,  F.  P.  Blair,  Sr.,  to  pass  our  lines,  go  south 
and  return,"  as  his  only  credential,  set  out  for  Rich 
mond.  From  General  Grant's  camp  he  forwarded  two 
letters  to  Jefferson  Davis :  one,  a  brief  request  to  be 


BLAIR'S  MEXICAN  PROJECT        479 

allowed  to  go  to  Richmond  in  search  of  missing  title 
papers  presumably  taken  from  his  Maryland  home 
during  Early's  raid ;  the  other,  a  longer  letter,  explain 
ing  the  real  object  of  his  visit,  but  stating  with  the  ut 
most  candor  that  he  came  wholly  unaccredited,  save 
for  permission  to  pass  the  lines,  and  that  he  had  not 
offered  the  suggestions  he  wished  to  submit  in  person 
to  Mr.  Davis  to  any  one  in  authority  at  Washington. 

After  some  delay,  he  found  himself  in  Richmond, 
and  was  accorded  a  confidential  interview  by  the  rebel 
President  on  January  12,  1865,  when  he  unfolded  his 
project,  which  proved  to  be  nothing  less  than  a  propo 
sition  that  the  Union  and  Confederate  armies  cease 
fighting  each  other  and  unite  to  drive  the  French  from 
Mexico.  He  supported  this  daring  idea  in  a  paper  of 
some  length,  pointing  out  that  as  slavery,  the  real  cause 
of  the  war,  was  hopelessly  doomed,  nothing  now  re 
mained  to  keep  the  two  sections  of  the  country  apart 
except  the  possible  intervention  of  foreign  soldiery. 
Hence,  all  considerations  pointed  to  the  wisdom  of 
dislodging  the  French  invaders  from  American  soil, 
and  thus  baffling  "the  designs  of  Napoleon  to  subject 
our  Southern  people  to  the  'Latin  race.' ' 

"He  who  expels  the  Bonaparte-Hapsburg  dynasty 
from  our  southern  flank,"  the  paper  said  further,  "will 
ally  his  name  with  those  of  Washington  and  Jackson 
as  a  defender  of  the  liberty  of  the  country.  If  in 
delivering  Mexico  he  should  model  its  States  in  form 
and  principle  to  adapt  them  to  our  Union,  and  add  a 
new  southern  constellation  to  its  benignant  sky  while 
rounding  off  our  possessions  on  the  continent  at  the 
Isthmus,  ...  he  would  complete  the  work  of 
Jefferson,  who  first  set  one  foot  of  our  colossal  govern 
ment  on  the  Pacific  by  a  stride  from  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico. 


480  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

"I  then  said  to  him,  There  is  my  problem,  Mr. 
Davis;  do  you  think  it  possible  to  be  solved?'  After 
consideration,  he  said :  'I  think  so.'  I  then  said,  'You 
see  that  I  make  the  great  point  of  this  matter  that  the 
war  is  no  longer  made  for  slavery,  but  monarchy.  You 
know  that  if  the  war  is  kept  up  and  the  Union  kept 
divided,  armies  must  be  kept  afoot  on  both  sides,  and 
this  state  of  things  has  never  continued  long  with 
out  resulting  in  monarchy  on  one  side  or  the  other,  and 
on  both  generally.'  He  assented  to  this." 

The  substantial  accuracy  of  Mr.  Blair's  report  is  con 
firmed  by  the  memorandum  of  the  same  interview 
which  Jefferson  Davis  wrote  at  the  time.  In  this  con 
versation,  the  rebel  leader  took  little  pains  to  disguise 
his  entire  willingness  to  enter  upon  the  wild  scheme 
of  military  conquest  and  annexation  which  could  easily 
be  read  between  the  lines  of  a  political  crusade  to  rescue 
the  Monroe  Doctrine  from  its  present  peril.  If  Mr. 
Blair  felt  elated  at  having  so  quickly  made  a  convert 
of  the  Confederate  President,  he  was  further  gratified 
at  discovering  yet  more  favorable  symptoms  in  his 
official  surroundings  at  Richmond.  In  the  three  or 
four  days  he  spent  at  the  rebel  capital  he  found  nearly 
every  prominent  personage  convinced  of  the  hopeless 
condition  of  the  rebellion,  and  even  eager  to  seize 
upon  any  contrivance  to  help  them  out  of  their  direful 
prospects. 

But  the  government  councils  at  Washington  were 
not  ruled  by  the  spirit  of  political  adventure.  Abraham 
Lincoln  had  a  loftier  conception  of  patriotic  duty,  and 
a  higher  ideal  of  national  ethics.  His  whole  interest 
in  Mr.  Blair's  mission  lay  in  the  rebel  despondency  it 
disclosed,  and  the  possibility  it  showed  of  bringing 
the  Confederates  to  an  abandonment  of  their  resistance. 
Mr.  Davis  had,  indeed,  given  Mr.  Blair  a  letter,  to  be 


BLAIR'S  SECOND  VISIT  481 

shown  to  President  Lincoln,  stating  his  willingness, 
"notwithstanding  the  rejection  of  our  former  offers," 
to  appoint  a  commissioner  to  enter  into  negotiations 
"with  a  view  to  secure  peace  to  the  two  countries." 
This  was,  of  course,  the  old  impossible  attitude.  In 
reply  the  President  wrote  Mr.  Blair  on  January  18  the 
following  note: 

"SiR :  You  having  shown  me  Mr.  Davis's  letter  to 
you  of  the  twelfth  instant,  you  may  say  to  him  that  I 
have  constantly  been,  am  now,  and  shall  continue  ready 
to  receive  any  agent  whom  he,  or  any  other  influential 
person  now  resisting  the  national  authority,  may  in 
formally  send  to  me,  with  the  view  of  securing  peace  to 
the  people  of  our  one  common  country." 

With  this,  Mr.  Blair  returned  to  Richmond,  giving 
Mr.  Davis  such  excuses  as  he  could  hastily  frame  why 
the  President  had  rejected  his  plan  for  a  joint  invasion 
of  Mexico.  Jefferson  Davis  therefore  had  only  two 
alternatives  before  him — either  to  repeat  his  stubborn 
ultimatum  of  separation  and  independence,  or  frankly 
to  accept  Lincoln's  ultimatum  of  reunion.  The  prin 
cipal  Richmond  authorities  knew,  and  some  of  them 
admitted,  that  their  Confederacy  was  nearly  in  col 
lapse.  Lee  sent  a  despatch  saying  he  had  not  two  days' 
rations  for  his  army.  Richmond  was  already  in  a  panic 
at  rumors  of  evacuation.  Flour  was  selling  at  a  thou 
sand  dollars  a  barrel  in  Confederate  currency.  The 
recent  fall  of  Fort  Fisher  had  closed  the  last  avenue 
through  which  blockade-runners  could  bring  in  foreign 
supplies.  Governor  Brown  of  Georgia  was  refusing  to 
obey  orders  from  Richmond,  and  characterizing  them 
as  "despotic."  Under  such  circumstances  a  defiant  cry 
of  independence  would  not  reassure  anybody;  nor,  on 
the  other  hand,  was  it  longer  possible  to  remain  silent. 
Mr.  Blair's  first  visit  had  created  general  interest ;  when 

31 


482  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

he  came  a  second  time,  wonder  and  rumor  rose  to  fever 
heat. 

Impelled  to  take  action,  Mr.  Davis  had  not  the  cour 
age  to  be  frank.  After  consultation  with  his  cabinet, 
a  peace  commission  of  three  was  appointed,  consisting 
of  Alexander  H.  Stephens,  Vice-President ;  R.  M.  T. 
Hunter,  senator  and  ex-Secretary  of  State;  and  John 
A.  Campbell,  Assistant  Secretary  of  War — all  of  them 
convinced  that  the  rebellion  was  hopeless,  but  unwill 
ing  to  admit  the  logical  consequences  and  necessities. 
The  drafting  of  instructions  for  their  guidance  was  a 
difficult  problem,  since  the  explicit  condition  prescribed 
by  Mr.  Lincoln's  note  was  that  he  would  receive  only 
an  agent  sent,  him  "with  the  view  of  securing  peace  to 
the  people  of  our  one  common  country."  The  rebel 
Secretary  of  State  proposed,  in  order  to  make  the  in 
structions  "as  vague  and  general  as  possible,"  the  sim 
ple  direction  to  confer  "upon  the  subject  to  which  it  re 
lates"  ;  but  his  chief  refused  the  suggestion,  and  wrote 
the  following  instruction,  which  carried  a  palpable  con 
tradiction  on  its  face : 

"In  conformity  with  the  letter  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  of 
which  the  foregoing  is  a  copy,  you  are  requested  to  pro 
ceed  to  Washington  City  for  informal  conference  with 
him  upon  the  issues  involved  in  the  existing  war,  and 
for  the  purpose  of  securing  peace  to  the  two  countries." 

With  this  the  commissioners  presented  themselves 
at  the  Union  lines  on  the  evening  of  January  29,  but 
instead  of  showing  their  double-meaning  credential, 
asked  admission,  "in  accordance  with  an  understand 
ing  claimed  to  exist*  with  Lieutenant-General  Grant." 
Mr.  Lincoln,  being  apprised  of  the  application,  promptly 
despatched  Major  Thomas  T.  Eckert,  of  the  War  De 
partment,  with  written  directions  to  admit  them  under 
safe-conduct,  if  they  would  say  in  writing  that  they 


HAMPTON   ROADS   CONFERENCE    483 

came  for  the  purpose  of  an  informal  conference  on  the 
basis  of  his  note  of  January  18  to  Mr.  Blair.  The  com 
missioners,  having  meantime  reconsidered  the  form  of 
their  application  and  addressed  a  new  one  to  General 
Grant  which  met  the  requirements,  were  provisionally 
conveyed  to  Grant's  headquarters;  and  on  January  31 
the  President  commissioned  Secretary  Seward  to  meet 
them,  saying  in  his  written  instructions : 

"You  will  make  known  to  them  that  three  things  are 
indispensable,  to  wit :  First.  The  restoration  of  the 
national  authority  throughout  all  the  States.  Second. 
No  receding  by  the  Executive  of  the  United  States  on 
the  slavery  question  from  the  position  assumed  thereon 
in  the  late  annual  message  to  Congress,  and  in  pre 
ceding  documents.  Third.  No  cessation  of  hostilities 
short  of  an  end  of  the  war,  and  the  disbanding  of  all 
forces  hostile  to  the  government.  You  will  inform 
them  that  all  propositions  of  theirs,  not  inconsistent 
with  the  above,  will  be  considered  and  passed  upon  in 
a  spirit  of  sincere  liberality.  You  will  hear  all  they 
may  choose  to  say,  and  report  it  to  me.  You  will  not 
assume  to  definitely  consummate  anything." 

Mr.  Seward  started  on  the  morning  of  February  i, 
and  simultaneously  with  his  departure  the  President 
repeated  to  General  Grant  the  monition  already  sent 
him  two  days  before:  "Let  nothing  which  is  transpir 
ing  change,  hinder,  or  delay  your  military  movements 
or  plans."  Major  Eckert  had  arrived  while  Mr.  Sew 
ard  was  yet  on  the  way,  and  on  seeing  Jefferson  Davis's 
instructions,  promptly  notified  the  commissioners  that 
they  could  not  proceed  further  without  complying 
strictly  with  President  Lincoln's  terms.  Thus,  at  half- 
past  nine  on  the  night  of  February  I,  their  mission  was 
practically  at  an  end,  though  next  day  they  again  re 
canted  and  accepted  the  President's  conditions  in  writ- 


484  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

ing.  Mr.  Lincoln,  on  reading  Major  Eckert's  report 
on  the  morning  of  February  2,  was  about  to  recall 
Secretary  Seward  by  telegraph,  when  he  was  shown 
a  confidential  despatch  from  General  Grant  to  the 
Secretary  of  War,  stating  his  belief  that  the  intention 
of  the  commissioners  was  good,  and  their  desire  for 
peace  sincere,  and  regretting  that  Mr.  Lincoln  could 
not  have  an  interview  with  them.  This  communication 
served  to  change  his  purpose.  Resolving  not  to  neglect 
the  indications  of  sincerity  here  described,  he  tele 
graphed  at  once,  "Say  to  the  gentlemen  I  will  meet 
them  personally  at  Fortress  Monroe  as  soon  as  I  can  get 
there,"  and  joined  Secretary  Seward  that  same  night. 
On  the  morning  of  February  3,  1865,  the  rebel 
commissioners  were  conducted  on  board  the  River 
Queen,  lying  at  anchor  near  Fort  Monroe,  where  Presi 
dent  Lincoln  and  Secretary  Seward  awaited  them.  It 
was  agreed  beforehand  that  no  writing  or  memoran 
dum  should  be  made  at  the  time,  so  the  record  of  the 
interview  remains  only  in  the  separate  accounts  which 
the  rebel  commissioners  wrote  out  afterward  from 
memory,  neither  Mr.  Seward  nor  President  Lincoln 
ever  having  made  any  report  in  detail.  In  a  careful 
analysis  of  these  reports,  the  first  striking  feature  is 
the  difference  of  intention  between  the  parties.  It  is 
apparent  that  Mr.  Lincoln  went  honestly  and  frankly 
to  offer  them  the  best  terms  he  could  to  secure  peace 
and  reunion,  but  to  abate  no  jot  of  official  duty  or 
personal  dignity;  while  the  main  thought  of  the  com 
missioners  was  to  evade  the  express  condition  on 
which  they  had  been  admitted  to  conference,  to  seek  to 
postpone  the  vital  issue,  and  to  propose  an  armistice 
by  debating  a  mere  juggling  expedient  against  which 
they  had  in  a  private  agreement  with  one  another  al 
ready  committed  themselves. 


HAMPTON   ROADS   CONFERENCE    485 

At  the  first  hint  of  Blair's  Mexican  project,  how- 
'ever,  Mr.  Lincoln  firmly  disclaimed  any  responsibility 
for  the  suggestion,  or  any  intention  of  adopting  it,  and 
during  the  four  hours'  talk  led  the  conversation  con 
tinually  back  to  the  original  object  of  the  conference. 
But  though  he  patiently  answered  the  many  questions 
addressed  him  by  the  commissioners,  as  to  what  would 
probably  be  done  on  various  important  subjects  that 
must  arise  at  once  if  the  Confederate  States  consented, 
carefully  discriminating  in  his  answers  between  what 
he  was  authorized  under  the  Constitution  to  do  as 
Executive,  and  what  would  devolve  upon  coordinate 
branches  of  the  government,  the  interview  came  to 
nothing.  The  commissioners  returned  to  Richmond 
in  great  disappointment,  and  communicated  the  failure 
of  their  efforts  to  Jefferson  Davis,  whose  chagrin  was 
equal  to  their  own.  They  had  all  caught  eagerly  at  the 
hope  that  this  negotiation  would  somehow  extricate 
them  from  the  dilemmas  and  dangers  of  their  situation. 
Davis  took  the  only  course  open  to  him  after  refusing 
the  honorable  peace  Mr.  Lincoln  had  tendered.  He 
transmitted  the  commissioners'  report  to  the  rebel  Con 
gress,  with  a  brief  and  dry  message  stating  that  the 
enemy  refused  any  terms  except  those  the  conqueror 
might  grant;  and  then  arranged  as  vigorous  an  effort 
as  circumstances  permitted  once  more  to  "fire  the 
Southern  heart."  A  public  meeting  was  called,  where 
the  speeches,  judging  from  the  meager  reports  printed, 
were  as  denunciatory  and  bellicose  as  the  bitterest  Con 
federate  could  desire.  Davis  particularly  is  repre 
sented  to  have  excelled  himself  in  defiant  heroics. 
"Sooner  than  we  should  ever  be  united  again,"  he 
said,  "he  would  be  willing  to  yield  up  everything  he  had 
on  earth — if  it  were  possible,  he  would  sacrifice  a  thou 
sand  lives";  and  he  further  announced  his  confidence 


486  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

that  they  would  yet  "compel  the  Yankees,  in  less  than 
twelve  months,  to  petition  us  for  peace  on  our  own 
terms." 

This  extravagant  rhetoric  would  seem  merely  gro 
tesque,  were  it  not  embittered  by  the  reflection  that 
it  was  the  signal  which  carried  many  additional  thou 
sands  of  brave  soldiers  to  death,  in  continuing  a  pal 
pably  hopeless  military  struggle. 


XXXIV 

Blair — Chase  Chief  Justice — Speed  Succeeds  Bates — Mc- 
Culloch  Succeeds  Fessenden — Resignation  of  Mr. 
Usher — Lincoln's  Offer  of  $400,000,000 — The  Second 
Inaugural — Lincoln's  Literary  Rank — His  Last  Speech 

THE  principal  concession  in  the  Baltimore  platform 
made  by  the  friends  of  the  administration  to  their 
opponents,  the  radicals,  was  the  resolution  which 
called  for  harmony  in  the  cabinet.  The  President  at 
first  took  no  notice,  either  publicly  or  privately,  of  this 
resolution,  which  was  in  effect  a  recommendation  that 
he  dismiss  those  members  of  his  council  who  were  stig 
matized  as  conservatives;  and  the  first  cabinet  change 
which  actually  took  place  after  the  adjournment  of 
the  convention  filled  the  radical  body  of  his  supporters 
with  dismay,  since  they  had  looked  upon  Mr.  Chase  as 
their  special  representative  in  the  government.  The 
publication  of  the  Wade-Davis  manifesto  still  further 
increased  their  restlessness,  and  brought  upon  Mr. 
Lincoln  a  powerful  pressure  from  every  quarter  to  sat 
isfy  radical  demands  by  dismissing  Montgomery  Blair, 
his  Postmaster-General.  Mr.  Blair  had  been  one  of 
the  founders  of  the  Republican  party,  and  in  the  very 
forefront  of  opposition  to  slavery  extension,  but  had 
gradually  attracted  to  himself  the  hostility  of  all  the 
radical  Republicans  in  the  country.  The  immediate 
cause  of  this  estrangement  was  the  bitter  quarrel  that 
developed  between  his  family  and  General  Fremont  in 
Missouri :  a  quarrel  in  which  the  Blairs  were  un 
doubtedly  right  in  the  beginning,  but  which  broadened 

487 


488  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

and  extended  until  it  landed  them  finally  in  the  Dem 
ocratic  party. 

The  President  considered  the  dispute  one  of  form 
rather  than  substance,  and  having  a  deep  regard,  not 
only  for  the  Postmaster-General,  but  for  his  brother, 
General  Frank  Blair,  and  for  his  distinguished  father, 
was  most  reluctant  to  take  action  against  him.  Even 
in  the  bosom  of  the  government,  however,  a  strong 
hostility  to  Mr.  Blair  manifested  itself.  As  long  as 
Chase  remained  in  the  cabinet  there  was  smoldering 
hostility  between  them,  and  his  attitude  toward  Seward 
and  Stanton  was  one  of  increasing  enmity.  General 
Halleck,  incensed  at  some  caustic  remarks  Blair  was 
reported  to  have  made  about  the  defenders  of  the 
capital  after  Early's  raid,  during  which  the  family 
estate  near  Washington  had  suffered,  sent  an  angry 
note  to  the  War  Department,  wishing  to  know  if  such 
"wholesale  denouncement"  had  the  President's  sanc 
tion;  adding  that  either  the  names  of  the  officers  ac 
cused  should  be  stricken  from  the  rolls,  or  the  "slan 
derer  dismissed  from  the  cabinet/'  Mr.  Stanton  sent 
the  letter  to  the  President  without  comment.  This 
was  too  much;  and  the  Secretary  received  an  answer 
on  the  very  same  day,  written  in  Mr.  Lincoln's  most 
masterful  manner : 

"Whether  the  remarks  were  really  made  I  do  not 
know,  nor  do  I  suppose  such  knowledge  is  necessary  to 
a  correct  response.  If  they  were  made,  I  do  not  ap 
prove  them ;  and  yet,  under  the  circumstances,  I  would 
not  dismiss  a  member  of  the  cabinet  therefor.  I  do  not 
consider  what  may  have  been  hastily  said  in  a  mo 
ment  of  vexation  at  so  severe  a  loss  is  sufficient  ground 
for  so  grave  a  step.  ...  I  propose  continuing  to 
be  myself  the  judge  as  to  when  a  member  of  the  cabinet 
shall  be  dismissed." 


RESIGNATION   OF   BLAIR  489 

Not  content  with  this,  the  President,  when  the  cab 
inet  came  together,  read  them  this  impressive  little 
lecture : 

"I  must  myself  be  the  judge  how  long  to  retain  in 
and  when  to  remove  any  of  you  from  his  position.  It 
would  greatly  pain  me  to  discover  any  of  you  endea 
voring  to  procure  another's  removal,  or  in  any  way 
to  prejudice  him  before  the  public.  Such  endeavor 
would  be  a  wrong  to  me,  and,  much  worse,  a  wrong 
to  the  country.  My  wish  is  that  on  this  subject  no 
remark  be  made  nor  question  asked  by  any  of  you, 
here  or  elsewhere,  now  or  hereafter." 

This  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  speeches  ever 
made  by  a  President.  The  tone  of  authority  is  unmis 
takable.  Washington  was  never  more  dignified;  Jack 
son  was  never  more  peremptory. 

The  feeling  against  Mr.  Blair  and  the  pressure  upon 
the  President  for  his  removal  increased  throughout 
the  summer.  All  through  the  period  of  gloom  and 
discouragement  he  refused  to  act,  even  when  he  be 
lieved  the  verdict  of  the  country  likely  to  go  against 
him,  and  was  assured  on  every  side  that  such  a  conces 
sion  to  the  radical  spirit  might  be  greatly  to  his  ad 
vantage.  But  after  the  turn  had  come,  and  the  pro 
spective  triumph  of  the  Union  cause  became  evident, 
he  felt  that  he  ought  no  longer  to  retain  in  his  cabinet 
a  member  who,  whatever  his  personal  merits,  had  lost 
the  confidence  of  the  great  body  of  Republicans ;  and  on 
September  9  wrote  him  a  kindly  note,  requesting  his 
resignation. 

Mr.  Blair  accepted  his  dismissal  in  a  manner  to  be 
expected  from  his  manly  and  generous  character,  not 
pretending  to  be  pleased,  but  assuming  that  the  Presi 
dent  had  good  reason  for  his  action ;  and,  on  turning 
over  his  office  to  his  successor,  ex-Governor  William 


490  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Dennison  of  Ohio,  went  at  once  to  Maryland  and  en 
tered  into  the  campaign,  working  heartily  for  Mr. 
Lincoln's  reelection. 

After  the  death  of  Judge  Taney  in  October,  Mr. 
Blair  for  a  while  indulged  the  hope  that  he  might  be 
appointed  chief  justice,  a  position  for  which  his  nat 
ural  abilities  and  legal  acquirements  eminently  fitted 
him.  But  Mr.  Chase  was  chosen,  to  the  bitter  disap 
pointment  of  Mr.  Blair's  family,  though  even  this  did 
not  shake  their  steadfast  loyalty  to  the  Union  cause 
or  their  personal  friendship  for  the  President.  Imme 
diately  after  his  second  inauguration,  Mr.  Lincoln 
offered  Montgomery  Blair  his  choice  of  the  Spanish  or 
the  Austrian  mission,  an  offer  which  he  peremptorily 
though  respectfully  declined. 

The  appointment  of  Mr.  Chase  as  chief  justice  had 
probably  been  decided  on  in  Mr.  Lincoln's  own  mind 
from  the  first,  though  he  gave  no  public  intimation  of 
his  decision  before  sending  the  nomination  to  the  Sen 
ate  on  December  6.  Mr.  Chase's  partizans  claimed 
that  the  President  had  already  virtually  promised  him 
the  place;  his  opponents  counted  upon  the  ex-secre 
tary's  attitude  of  criticism  to  work  against  his  appoint 
ment.  But  Mr.  Lincoln  sternly  checked  all  presenta 
tions  of  this  personal  argument;  nor  were  the  prayers 
of  those  who  urged  him  to  overlook  the  harsh  and  in 
decorous  things  Mr.  Chase  had  said  of  him  at  all  neces 
sary.  To  one  who  spoke  in  this  latter  strain  the 
President  replied : 

"Oh,  as  to  that  I  care  nothing.  Of  Mr.  Chase's 
ability,  and  of  his  soundness  on  the  general  issues  of 
the  war,  there  is,  of  course,  no  question.  I  have  only 
one  doubt  about  his  appointment.  He  is  a  man  of  un 
bounded  ambition,  and  has  been  working  all  his  life 
to  become  President.  That  he  can  never  be ;  and  I  fear 


CHASE  CHIEF  JUSTICE  491 

that  if  I  make  him  chief  justice  he  will  simply  become 
more  restless  and  uneasy  and  neglect  the  place  in  his 
strife  and  intrigue  to  make  himself  President.  If  I 
were  sure  that  he  would  go  on  the  bench  and  give 
up  his  aspirations,  and  do  nothing  but  make  himself  a 
great  judge,  I  would  not  hesitate  a  moment.'' 

He  wrote  out  Mr.  Chase's  nomination  with  his  own 
hand,  and  sent  it  to  the  Senate  the  day  after  Congress 
came  together.  It  was  confirmed  at  once,  without  ref 
erence  to  a  committee,  and  Mr.  Chase,  on  learning  of 
his  new  dignity,  sent  the  President  a  cordial  note, 
thanking  him  for  the  manner  of  his  appointment,  and 
adding:  UI  prize  your  confidence  and  good  will  more 
than  any  nomination  to  office."  But  Mr.  Lincoln's 
fears  were  better  founded  than  his  hopes.  Though  Mr. 
Chase  took  his  place  on  the  bench  with  a  conscientious 
desire  to  do  his  whole  duty  in  his  great  office,  he  could 
not  dismiss  the  political  affairs  of  the  country  from  his 
mind,  and  still  considered  himself  called  upon  to  coun 
teract  the  mischievous  tendencies  of  the  President  to 
ward  conciliation  and  hasty  reconstruction. 

The  reorganization  of  the  cabinet  went  on  by  grad 
ual  disintegration  rather  than  by  any  brusque  or  even 
voluntary  action  on  the  part  of  Mr.  Lincoln.  Mr. 
Bates,  the  attorney-general,  growing  weary  of  the  la 
bors  of  his  official  position,  resigned  toward  the  end 
of  November.  Mr.  Lincoln,  on  whom  the  claim  of 
localities  always  had  great  weight,  unable  to  decide 
upon  another  Missourian  fitted  for  the  place,  offered 
it  to  Joseph  Holt  of  Kentucky,  who  declined,  and  then 
to  James  Speed,  also  a  Kentuckian  of  high  profes 
sional  and  social  standing,  the  brother  of  his  early 
friend  Joshua  F.  Speed.  Soon  after  the  opening  of 
the  new  year,  Mr.  Fessenden,  having  been  again  elected 
to  the  Senate  from  Maine,  resigned  his  office  as  Secre- 


492  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

tary  of  the  Treasury.  The  place  thus  vacated  instantly 
excited  a  wide  and  spirited  competition  of  recommen 
dations.  The  President  wished  to  appoint  Governor 
Morgan  of  New  York,  who  declined,  and  the  choice 
finally  fell  upon  Hugh  McCulloch  of  Indiana,  who  had 
made  a  favorable  record  as  comptroller  of  the  cur 
rency.  Thus  only  two  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  original  cab 
inet,  Mr.  Seward  and  Mr.  Welles,  were  in  office  at  the 
date  of  his  second  inauguration;  and  still  another 
change  was  in  contemplation.  Mr.  Usher  of  Indiana, 
who  had  for  some  time  discharged  the  duties  of  Secre 
tary  of  the  Interior,  desiring,  as  he  said,  to  relieve  the 
President  from  any  possible  embarrassment  which 
might  arise  from  the  fact  that  two  of  his  cabinet  were 
from  the  same  State,  sent  in  his  resignation,  which 
Mr.  Lincoln  indorsed  "To  take  effect  May  15,  1865." 

The  tragic  events  of  the  future  were  mercifully  hid 
den.  Mr.  Lincoln,  looking  forward  to  four  years  more 
of  personal  leadership,  was  planning  yet  another  gen 
erous  offer  to  shorten  the  period  of  conflict.  His  talk 
with  the  commissioners  at  Hampton  Roads  had  prob 
ably  revealed  to  him  the  undercurrent  of  their  hopeless 
ness  and  anxiety ;  and  he  had  told  them  that  personally 
he  would  be  in  favor  of  the  government  paying  a  liberal 
indemnity  for  the  loss  of  slave  property,  on  absolute 
cessation  of  the  war  and  the  voluntary  abolition  of 
slavery  by  the  Southern  States. 

This  was  indeed  going  to  the  extreme  of  magnanim 
ity;  but  Mr.  Lincoln  remembered  that  the  rebels,  not 
withstanding  all  their  offenses  and  errors,  were  yet 
American  citizens,  members  of  the  same  nation,  bro 
thers  of  the  same  blood.  He  remembered,  too,  that 
the  object  of  the  war,  equally  with  peace  and  freedom, 
was  the  maintenance  of  one  government  and  the  per 
petuation  of  one  Union.  Not  only  must  hostilities 


LINCOLN'S  OFFER  493 

cease,  but  dissension,  suspicion,  and  estrangement  be 
eradicated.  Filled  with  such  thoughts  and  purposes, 
he  spent  the  day  after  his  return  from  Hampton  Roads 
in  considering  and  perfecting  a  new  proposal,  designed 
as  a  peace  offering  to  the  States  in  rebellion.  On  the 
evening  of  February  5,  1865,  he  called  his  cabinet  to 
gether,  and  read  to  them  the  draft  of  a  joint  resolu 
tion  and  proclamation  embodying  this  idea,  offering 
the  Southern  States  four  hundred  million  dollars,  or 
a  sum  equal  to  the  cost  of  the  war  for  two  hundred 
days,  on  condition  that  hostilities  cease  by  the  first  of 
April,  1865;  to  be  paid  in  six  per  cent,  government 
bonds,  pro  rata  on  their  slave  populations  as  shown 
by  the  census  of  1860 — one  half  on  April  i,  the  other 
half  only  upon  condition  that  the  Thirteenth  Amend 
ment  be  ratified  by  a  requisite  number  of  States  before 
July  i,  1865. 

It  turned  out  that  he  was  more  humane  and  liberal 
than  his  constitutional  advisers.  The  indorsement  in 
his  own  handwriting  on  the  manuscript  draft  records 
the  result  of  his  appeal  and  suggestion : 

"February  5,  1865.  To-day,  these  papers,  which  ex 
plain  themselves,  were  drawn  up  and  submitted  to  the 
cabinet,  and  unanimously  disapproved  by  them. 

"A.  LINCOLN." 

With  the  words,  "You  are  all  opposed  to  me,"  sadly 
uttered,  the  President  folded  up  the  paper  and  ceased 
the  discussion. 

The  formal  inauguration  of  Mr.  Lincoln  for  his  sec 
ond  presidential  term  took  place  at  the  appointed  time, 
March  4,  1865.  There  is  little  variation  in  the  simple 
but  impressive  pageantry  with  which  the  official  cere 
mony  is  celebrated.  The  principal  novelty  commented 


494  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

upon  by  the  newspapers  was  the  share  which  the  hith 
erto  enslaved  race  had  for  the  first  time  in  this  public 
and  political  drama.  Civic  associations  of  negro  citi 
zens  joined  in  the  procession,  and  a  battalion  of  negro 
soldiers  formed  part  of  the  military  escort.  The  wea 
ther  was  sufficiently  favorable  to  allow  the  ceremonies 
to  take  place  on  the  eastern  portico  of  the  Capitol,  in 
view  of  a  vast  throng  of  spectators.  The  central  act 
of  the  occasion  was  President  Lincoln's  second  inau 
gural  address,  which  enriched  the  political  literature 
of  the  Union  with  another  masterpiece,  and  deserves 
to  be  quoted  in  full.  He  said  : 

"FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN  :  At  this  second  appearing 
to  take  the  oath  of  the  presidential  office,  there  is  less 
occasion  for  an  extended  address  than  there  was  at 
the  first.  Then,  a  statement,  somewhat  in  detail,  of  a 
course  to  be  pursued,  seemed  fitting  and  proper.  Now, 
at  the  expiration  of  four  years,  during  which  public 
declarations  have  been  constantly  called  forth  on  every 
point  and  phase  of  the  great  contest  which  still  ab- 
sorbes  the  attention  and  engrosses  the. energies  of  the 
nation,  little  that  is  new  could  be  presented.  The 
progress  of  our  arms,  upon  which  all  else  chiefly  de 
pends,  is  as  well  known  to  the  public  as  to  myself;  and 
it  is,  I  trust,  reasonably  satisfactory  and  encouraging 
to  all.  With  high  hope  for  the  future,  no  prediction  in 
regard  to  it  is  ventured. 

"On  the  occasion  corresponding  to  this  four  years 
ago,  all  thoughts  were  anxiously  directed  to  an  im 
pending  civil  war.  All  dreaded  it — all  sought  to  avert 
it.  While  the  inaugural  address  was  being  delivered 
from  this  place,  devoted  altogether  to  saving  the  Union 
without  war,  insurgent  agents  were  in  the  city  seeking 
to  destroy  it  without  war — seeking  to  dissolve  the 


THE   SECOND   INAUGURAL  495 

Union,  and  divide  effects,  by  negotiation.  Both  parties 
deprecated  war;  but  one  of  them  would  make  war 
rather  than  let  the  nation  survive ;  and  the  other  would 
accept  war  rather  than  let  it  perish.  And  the  war 
came. 

"One  eighth  of  the  whole  population  were  colored 
slaves,  not  distributed  generally  over  the  Union,  but 
localized  in  the  Southern  part  of  it.  These  slaves 
constituted  a  peculiar  and  powerful  interest.  All  knew 
that  this  interest  was,  somehow,  the  cause  of  the  war. 
To  strengthen,  perpetuate,  and  extend  this  interest  was 
the  object  for  which  the  insurgents  would  rend  the 
Union,  even  by  war ;  while  the  government  claimed  no 
right  to  do  more  than  to  restrict  the  territorial  en 
largement  of  it.  Neither  party  expected  for  the  war 
the  magnitude  or  the  duration  which  it  has  already 
attained.  Neither  anticipated  that  the  cause  of  the 
conflict  might  cease  with,  or  even  before,  the  conflict 
itself  should  cease.  Each  looked  for  an  easier  tri 
umph,  and  a  result  less  fundamental  and  astounding. 
Both  read  the  same  Bible,  and  pray  to  the  same  God ; 
and  each  invokes  his  aid  against  the  other.  It  may 
seem  strange  that  any  men  should  dare  to  ask  a  just 
God's  assistance  in  wringing  their  bread  from  the 
sweat  of  other  men's  faces;  but  let  us  judge  not,  that 
we  be  not  judged.  The  prayers  of  both  could  not  be 
answered — that  of  neither  has  been  answered  fully. 
The  Almighty  has  his  own  purposes.  'Woe  unto  the 
world  because  of  offenses !  for  it  must  needs  be  that 
offenses  come;  but  woe  to  that  man  by  whom  the 
offense  cometh.'  If  we  shall  suppose  that  American 
slavery  is  one  of  those  offenses  which,  in  the  provi 
dence  of  God,  must  needs  come,  but  which,  having  con 
tinued  through  his  appointed  time,  he  now  wills  to 
remove,  and  that  he  gives  to  both  North  and  South 


496  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

this  terrible  war,  as  the  woe  due  to  those  by  whom 
the  offense  came,  shall  we  discern  therein  any  depar 
ture  from  those  divine  attributes  which  the  believers 
in  a  living  God  always  ascribe  to  him?  Fondly  do 
we  hope — fervently  do  we  pray — that  this  mighty 
scourge  of  war  may  speedily  pass  away.  Yet,  if  God 
wills  that  it  continue  until  all  the  wealth  piled  by 
the  bondman's  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  of  unre 
quited  toil  shall  be  sunk,  and  until  every  drop  of  blood 
drawn  with  the  lash  shall  be  paid  by  another  drawn 
with  the  sword,  as  was  said  three  thousand  years  ago, 
so  still  it  must  be  said,  'The  judgments  of  the  Lord  are 
true  and  righteous  altogether.' 

"With  malice  toward  none;  with  charity  for  all ;  with 
firmness  in  the  right,  as  God  gives  us  to  see  the  right, 
let  us  strive  on  to  finish  the  work  we  are  in ;  to  bind 
up  the  nation's  wounds,  to  care  for  him  who  shall  have 
borne  the  battle,  and  for  his  widow,  and  his  orphan — 
to  do  all  which  may  achieve  and  cherish  a  just  and 
lasting  peace  among  ourselves,  and  with  all  nations." 

The  address  being  concluded,  Chief-Justice  Chase 
administered  the  oath  of  office ;  and  listeners  who  heard 
Abraham  Lincoln  for  the  second  time  repeat,  "I  do 
solemnly  swear  that  I  will  faithfully  execute  the  office 
of  President  of  the  United  States,  and  will,  to  the  best 
of  my  ability,  preserve,  protect,  and  defend  the  Consti 
tution  of  the  United  States,"  went  from  the  impressive 
scene  to  their  several  homes  with  thankfulness  and  with 
confidence  that  the  destiny  of  the  country  and  the  lib 
erty  of  the  citizen  were  in  safe  keeping.  "The  fiery 
trial"  through  which  he  had  hitherto  walked  showed 
him  possessed  of  the  capacity,  the  courage,  and  the  will 
to  keep  the  promise  of  his  oath. 

Among  the  many  criticisms  passed  by  writers  and 
thinkers  upon  the  second  inaugural,  none  will  so  in- 


LINCOLN'S  LITERARY  RANK         497 

terest  the  reader  as  that  of  Mr.  Lincoln  himself,  written 
about  ten  days  after  its  delivery,  in  the  following  letter 
to  a  friend : 

"DEAR  MR.  WEED  :  Every  one  likes  a  compliment. 
Thank  you  for  yours  on  my  little  notification  speech, 
and  on  the  recent  inaugural  address.  I  expect  the  latter 
to  wear  as  well  as,  perhaps  better  than,  anything  I  have 
produced ;  but  I  believe  it  is  not  immediately  popular. 
Men  are  not  flattered  by  being  shown  that  there  has 
been  a  difference  of  purpose  between  the  Almighty  and 
them.  To  deny  it,  however,  in  this  case,  is  to  deny 
that  there  is  a  God  governing  the  world.  It  is  a  truth 
which  I  thought  needed  to  be  told,  and,  as  whatever 
of  humiliation  there  is  in  it  falls  most  directly  on  my 
self,  I  thought  others  might  afford  for  me  to  tell  it." 

Nothing  would  have  more  amazed  Mr.  Lincoln  than 
to  hear  himself  called  a  man  of  letters;  but  this  age 
has  produced  few  greater  writers.  Emerson  ranks 
him  with  ^sop;  Montalembert  commends  his  style  as 
a  model  for  the  imitation  of  princes.  It  is  true  that  in 
his  writings  the  range  of  subjects  is  not  great.  He  was 
chiefly  concerned  with  the  political  problems  of  the 
time,  and  the  moral  considerations  involved  in  them. 
But  the  range  of  treatment  is  remarkably  wide,  run 
ning  from  the  wit,  the  gay  humor,  the  florid  eloquence 
of  his  stump  speeches,  to  the  marvelous  sententiousness 
and  brevity  of  the  address  at  Gettysburg,  and  the  sus 
tained  and  lofty  grandeur  of  his  second  inaugural ; 
\vhile  many  of  his  phrases  have  already  passed  into 
the  daily  speech  of  mankind. 

A  careful  student  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  character  will 
find  this  inaugural  address  instinct  with  another  mean 
ing,  which,  very  naturally,  the  President's  own  com- 


82 


498  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

ment  did  not  touch.  The  eternal  law  of  compensation, 
which  it  declares  and  applies  to  the  sin  and  fall  of 
American  slavery,  in  a  diction  rivaling  the  fire  and  dig 
nity  of  the  old  Hebrew  prophecies,  may,  without  violent 
inference,  be  interpreted  to  foreshadow  an  intention  to 
renew  at  a  fitting  moment  the  brotherly  good-will  gift 
to  the  South  which  has  already  been  treated  of.  Such 
an  inference  finds  strong  corroboration  in  the  sen 
tences  which  closed  the  last  public  address  he  ever 
made.  On  Tuesday  evening,  April  n,  a  considerable 
assemblage  of  citizens  of  Washington  gathered  at  the 
Executive  Mansion  to  celebrate  the  victory  of  Grant 
over  Lee.  The  rather  long  and  careful  speech  which 
Mr.  Lincoln  made  on  that  occasion  was,  however,  less 
about  the  past  than  the  future.  It  discussed  the  sub 
ject  of  reconstruction  as  illustrated  in  the  case  of  Loui 
siana,  showing  also  how  that  issue  was  related  to  the 
questions  of  emancipation,  the  condition  of  the  freed- 
men,  the  welfare  of  the  South,  and  the  ratification  of 
the  constitutional  amendment. 

"So  new  and  unprecedented  is  the  whole  case,"  he 
concluded,  "that  no  exclusive  and  inflexible  plan  can 
safely  be  prescribed  as  to  details  and  collaterals.  Such 
exclusive  and  inflexible  plan  \vould  surely  become  a 
new  entanglement.  Important  principles  may  and  must 
be  inflexible.  In  the  present  situation,  as  the  phrase 
goes,  it  may  be  my  duty  to  make  some  new  announce 
ment  to  the  people  of  the  South.  I  am  considering,  and 
shall  not  fail  to  act  when  satisfied  that  action  will  be 
proper." 

Can  any  one  doubt  that  this  "new  announcement" 
which  was  taking  shape  in  his  mind  would  again  have 
embraced  and  combined  justice  to  the  blacks  and  gen 
erosity  to  the  whites  of  the  South,  with  Union  and 
liberty  for  the  whole  country  ? 


XXXV 

Depreciation  of  Confederate  Currency — Rigor  of  Con 
scription — Dissatisfaction  ivith  the  Confederate  Gov 
ernment — Lee  General-in-Chief — /.  E.  Johnston  Rcap- 
pointed  to  Oppose  Sherman  s  March — Value  of  Slave 
Property  Gone  in  Richmond — Davis's  Recommendation 
of  Emancipation — Benjamin's  Last  Despatch  to  Slidell 
—Condition  of  the  Army  when  Lee  took  Command- 
Lee  Attempts  Negotiations  zvith  Grant — Lincoln's  Di 
rections — Lee  and  Davis  Agree  upon  Line  of  Retreat- 
Assault  on  Fort  Stedman — Five  Forks — Evacuation  of 
Petersburg — Surrender  of  Richmond — Pursuit  of  Lee 
— Surrender  of  Lee — Burning  of  Richmond — Lincoln 
in  Richmond 

FROM  the  hour  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  reelection  the  Con 
federate  cause  was  doomed.  The  cheering  of  the 
troops  which  greeted  the  news  from  the  North  was 
heard  within  the  lines  at  Richmond  and  at  Petersburg ; 
and  although  the  leaders  maintained  their  attitude  of 
defiance,  the  impression  rapidly  gained  ground  among 
the  people  that  the  end  was  not  far  off.  The  stimulus 
of  hope  being  gone,  they  began  to  feel  the  pinch  of 
increasing  want.  Their  currency  had  become  almost 
worthless.  In  October,  a  dollar  in  gold  was  worth 
thirty-five  dollars  in  Confederate  money.  With  the 
opening  of  the  new  year  the  price  rose  to  sixty  dollars, 
and,  despite  the  efforts  of  the  Confederate  treasury, 
which  would  occasionally  rush  into  the  market  and 
beat  down  the  price  of  gold  ten  or  twenty  per  cent, 
a  day,  the  currency  gradually  depreciated  until  a  hun- 

499 


500  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

dred  for  one  was  offered  and  not  taken.  It  was  natural 
for  the  citizens  of  Richmond  to  think  that  monstrous 
prices  were  being  extorted  for  food,  clothing,  and  sup 
plies,  when  in  fact  they  were  paying  no  more  than  was 
reasonable.  To  pay  a  thousand  dollars  for  a  barrel 
of  flour  was  enough  to  strike  a  householder  with  ter 
ror,  but  ten  dollars  is  not  a  famine  price.  High  prices, 
however,  even  if  paid  in  dry  leaves,  are  a  hardship 
when  dry  leaves  are  not  plentiful ;  and  there  was 
scarcity  even  of  Confederate  money  in  the  South. 

At  every  advance  of  Grant's  lines  a  new  alarm  was 
manifested  in  Richmond,  the  first  proof  of  which  was 
always  a  fresh  rigor  in  enforcing  the  conscription  laws 
and  the  arbitrary  orders  of  the  frightened  authorities. 
After  the  capture  of  Fort  Harrison,  north  of  the  James, 
squads  of  guards  were  sent  into  the  streets  with  direc 
tions  to  arrest  every  able-bodied  man  they  met.  It  is 
said  that  the  medical  boards  were  ordered  to  exempt 
no  one  capable  of  bearing  arms  for  ten  days.  Human 
nature  will  not  endure  such  a  strain  as  this,  and  de 
sertion  grew  too  common  to  punish. 

As  disaster  increased,  the  Confederate  government 
steadily  lost  ground  in  the  confidence  and  respect  of 
the  Southern  people.  Mr.  Davis  and  his  councilors 
were  doing  their  best,  but  they  no  longer  got  any  credit 
for  it.  From  every  part  of  the  Confederacy  came  com 
plaints  of  what  was  done,  demands  for  what  was  im 
possible  to  do.  Some  of  the  States  were  in  a  condi 
tion  near  to  counter-revolution.  A  slow  paralysis  was 
benumbing  the  limbs  of  the  insurrection,  and  even  at 
the  heart  its  vitality  was  plainly  declining.  The  Con 
federate  Congress,  which  had  hitherto  been  the  mere 
register  of  the  President's  will,  now  turned  upon  him. 
On  January  19  it  passed  a  resolution  making  Lee  gen- 
eral-in-chief  of  the  army.  This  Mr.  Davis  might  have 


CONDITIONS   IN   RICHMOND         501 

borne  with  patience,  although  it  was  intended  as  a  no 
tification  that  his  meddling  with  military  affairs  must 
come  to  an  end.  But  far  worse  was  the  bitter  necessity 
put  upon  him  as  a  sequel  to  this  act,  of  reappointing 
General  Joseph  E.  Johnston  to  the  command  of  the 
army  which  was  to  resist  Sherman's  victorious  march 
to  the  north.  Mr.  Seddon,  rebel  Secretary  of  War, 
thinking  his  honor  impugned  by  a  vote  of  the  Virginia 
delegation  in  Congress,  resigned.  Warnings  of  serious 
demoralization  came  daily  from  the  army,  and  dis 
affection  was  so  rife  in  official  circles  in  Richmond 
that  it  was  not  thought  politic  to  call  public  attention 
to  it  by  measures  of  repression. 

It  is  curious  and  instructive  to  note  how  the  act  of 
emancipation  had  by  this  time  virtually  enforced  itself 
in  Richmond.  The  value  of  slave  property  was  gone. 
It  is  true  that  a  slave  was  still  occasionally  sold,  at  a 
price  less  than  one  tenth  of  what  he  would  have 
brought  before  the  war,  but  servants  could  be  hired 
of  their  nominal  owners  for  almost  nothing — merely 
enough  to  keep  up  a  show  of  vassalage.  In  effect,  any 
one  could  hire  a  negro  for  his  keeping — which  was  all 
that  anybody  in  Richmond,  black  or  white,  got  for  his 
work.  Even  Mr.  Davis  had  at  last  become  docile  to 
the  stern  teaching  of  events.  In  his  message  of  No 
vember  he  had  recommended  the  employment  of  forty 
thousand  slaves  in  the  army — not  as  soldiers,  it  is  true, 
save  in  the  last  extremity — with  emancipation  to  come. 

On  December  27,  Mr.  Benjamin  wrote  his  last  impor 
tant  instruction  to  John  Slidell,  the  Confederate  com 
missioner  in  Europe.  It  is  nothing  less  than  a.  cry  of 
despair.  Complaining  bitterly  of  the  attitude  of  for 
eign  nations  while  the  South  is  fighting  the  battles  of 
England  and  France  against  the  North,  he  asks :  "Are 
they  determined  never  to  recognize  the  Southern  Con- 


502  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

federacy  until  the  United  States  assent  to  such  action 
on  their  part?"  And  with  a  frantic  offer  to  submit 
to  any  terms  which  Europe  might  impose  as  the  price 
of  recognition,  and  a  scarcely  veiled  threat  of  making 
peace  with  the  North  unless  Europe  should  act  speedily, 
the  Confederate  Department  of  State  closed  its  four 
years  of  fruitless  activity. 

Lee  assumed  command  of  all  the  Confederate  armies 
on  February  9.  His  situation  was  one  of  unprecedented 
gloom.  The  day  before  he  had  reported  that  his  troops, 
who  had  been  in  line  of  battle  for  two  days  at  Hatcher's 
Run,  exposed  to  the  bad  winter  weather,  had  been  with 
out  meat  for  three  days.  A  prodigious  effort  was  made, 
and  the  danger  of  starvation  for  the  moment  averted, 
but  no  permanent  improvement  resulted.  The  armies 
of  the  Union  were  closing  in  from  every  point  of  the 
compass.  Grant  was  every  day  pushing  his  formidable 
left  wing  nearer  the  only  roads  by  which  Lee  could  es 
cape;  Thomas  was  threatening  the  Confederate  com 
munications  from  Tennessee;  Sheridan  was  riding 
for  the  last  time  up  the  Shenandoah  valley  to  abolish 
Early;  while  from  the  south  the  redoubtable  columns 
of  Sherman  were  moving  northward  with  the  steady 
pace  and  irresistible  progress  of  a  tragic  fate. 

A  singular  and  significant  attempt  at  negotiation 
was  made  at  this  time  by  General  Lee.  He  was  so 
strong  in  the  confidence  of  the  people  of  the  South, 
and  the  government  at  Richmond  was  so  rapidly  be 
coming  discredited,  that  he  could  doubtless  have  ob 
tained  the  popular  support  and  compelled  the  assent 
of  the  Executive  to  any  measures  he  thought  proper 
for  the  attainment  of  peace.  From  this  it  was  easy 
for  him  and  for  others  to  come  to  the  wholly  errone 
ous  conclusion  that  General  Grant  held  a  similar  re 
lation  to  the  government  and  people  of  the  United 


LEE'S   LETTER   TO   GRANT  503 

States.  General  Lee  seized  upon  the  pretext  of  a  con 
versation  reported  to  him  by  General  Longstreet  as 
having  been  held  with  General  E.  O.  C.  Ord  under  an 
ordinary  flag  of  truce  for  the  exchange  of  prisoners, 
to  address  a  letter  to  Grant,  sanctioned  by  Mr.  Davis, 
saying  he  had  been  informed  that  General  Ord  had  said 
General  Grant  would  not  decline  an  interview  with  a 
view  "to  a  satisfactory  adjustment  of  the  present  un 
happy  difficulties  by  means  of  a  military  convention," 
provided  Lee  had  authority  to  act.  He  therefore  pro 
posed  to  meet  General  Grant  "with  the  hope  that 
.  .  .  it  may  be  found  practicable  to  submit  the  sub 
jects  of  controversy  ...  to  a  convention  of  the 
kind  mentioned" ;  professing  himself  "authorized  to  do 
whatever  the  result  of  the  proposed  interview  may  ren 
der  necessary." 

Grant  at  once  telegraphed  these  overtures  to  Wash 
ington.  Stanton  received  the  despatch  at  the  Capitol, 
where  the  President  was,  according  to  his  custom,  pass 
ing  the  last  night  of  the  session  of  Congress,  for  the 
convenience  of  signing  bills.  The  Secretary  handed  the 
telegram  to  Mr.  Lincoln,  who  read  it  in  silence.  He 
asked  no  advice  or  suggestion  from  any  one  about  him, 
but,  taking  up  a  pen,  wrote  with  his  usual  slowness  and 
precision  a  despatch  in  Stanton's  name,  \vhich  he 
showed  to  Seward,  and  then  handed  to  Stanton  to  be 
signed  and  sent.  The  language  is  that  of  an  expe 
rienced  ruler,  perfectly  sure  of  himself  and  of  his 
duty : 

"The  President  directs  me  to  say  that  he  wishes  you 
to  have  no  conference  with  General  Lee,  unless  it  be 
for  capitulation  of  General  Lee's  army,  or  on  some 
minor  or  purely  military  matter.  He  instructs  me  to 
say  that  you  are  not  to  decide,  discuss,  or  confer  upon 
any  political  questions.  Such  questions  the  President 


504  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

holds  in  his  own  hands,  and  will  submit  them  to  no 
military  conferences  or  conventions.  Meanwhile,  you 
are  to  press  to  the  utmost  your  military  advantages." 

Grant  answered  Lee  that  he  had  no  authority  to  ac 
cede  to  his  proposition,  and  explained  that  General 
Ord's  language  must  have  been  misunderstood.  This 
closed  to  the  Confederate  authorities  the  last  avenue 
of  hope  of  any  compromise  by  which  the  alternative 
of  utter  defeat  or  unconditional  surrender  might  be 
avoided. 

Early  in  March,  General  Lee  visited  Richmond  for 
conference  with  Mr.  Davis  on  the  measures  to  be 
adopted  in  the  crisis  which  he  saw  was  imminent.  He 
had  never  sympathized  with  the  slight  Congress  had  in 
tended  to  put  upon  Mr.  Davis  when  it  gave  him  su 
preme  military  authority,  and  continued  to  the  end  to 
treat  his  President  as  commander-in-chief  of  the  forces. 
There  is  direct  contradiction  between  Mr.  Davis  and 
General  Lee  as  to  how  Davis  received  this  statement 
of  the  necessities  of  the  situation.  Mr.  Davis  says  he 
suggested  immediate  withdrawal  from  Richmond,  but 
that  Lee  said  his  horses  were  too  weak  for  the  roads 
in  their  present  condition,  and  that  he  must  wait.  Gen 
eral  Lee,  on  the  other  hand,  is  quoted  as  saying  that 
he  wished  to  retire  behind  the  Staunton  River,  from 
which  point  he  might  have  indefinitely  protracted  the 
war,  but  that  the  President  overruled  him.  Both 
agreed,  however,  that  sooner  or  later  Richmond  must 
be  abandoned,  and  that  the  next  move  should  be  to 
Danville. 

But  before  he  turned  his  back  forever  upon  the 
lines  he  had  so  stoutly  defended,  Lee  resolved  to  dash 
once  more  at  the  toils  by  which  he  was  surrounded. 
He  placed  half  his  army  under  the  command  of  Gen 
eral  John  B.  Gordon,  with  orders  to  break  through 


ASSAULT  ON  FORT  STEDMAN       505 

the  Union  lines  at  Fort  Stedman  and  take  possession 
of  the  high  ground  behind  them.  A  month  earlier 
Grant  had  foreseen  some  such  move  on  Lee's  part,  and 
had  ordered  General  Parke  to  be  prepared  to  meet  an 
assault  on  his  center,  and  to  have  his  commanders 
ready  to  bring  all  their  resources  to  bear  on  the  point 
in  danger,  adding:  "With  proper  alacrity  in  this  re 
spect,  I  would  have  no  objection  to  seeing  the  enemy 
get  through/'  This  characteristic  phrase  throws  the 
strongest  light  both  on  Grant's  temperament,  and  on 
the  mastery  of  his  business  at  which  he  had  arrived. 
Under  such  generalship,  an  army's  lines  are  a  trap  into 
which  entrance  is  suicide. 

The  assault  was  made  with  great  spirit  at  half-past 
four  on  the  morning  of  March  25.  Its  initial  success 
was  due  to  a  singular  cause.  The  spot  chosen  was  a 
favorite  point  for  deserters  to  pass  into  the  Union 
lines,  which  they  had  of  late  been  doing  in  large  num 
bers.  When  Gordon's  skirmishers,  therefore,  came 
stealing  through  the  darkness,  they  were  mistaken  for 
an  unusually  large  party  of  deserters,  and  they  over 
powered  several  picket-posts  without  firing  a  shot.  The 
storming  party,  following  at  once,  took  the  trenches 
with  a  rush,  and  in  a  few  minutes  had  possession  of  the 
main  line  on  the  right  of  the  fort,  and,  next,  of  the  fort 
itself.  It  was  hard  in  the  semi-darkness  to  distin 
guish  friends  from  foes,  and  for  a  time  General  Parke 
was  unable  to  make  headway;  but  with  the  growing 
light  his  troops  advanced  from  every  direction  to  mend 
the  breach,  and,  making  short  work  of  the  Confederate 
detachments,  recaptured  the  fort,  opening  a  cross-fire 
of  artillery  so  withering  that  few  of  the  Confederates 
could  get  back  to  their  own  lines.  This  was,  moreover, 
not  the  only  damage  the  Confederates  suffered.  Hum 
phreys  and  Wright,  on  the  Union  left,  rightly  assum- 


506  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

ing  that  Parke  could  take  care  of  himself,  instantly 
searched  the  lines  in  their  front  to  see  if  they  had  been 
essentially  weakened  to  support  Gordon's  attack. 
They  found  they  had  not,  but  in  gaining  this  know 
ledge  captured  the  enemy's  intrenched  picket-lines  in 
front  of  them,  which,  being  held,  gave  inestimable  ad 
vantage  to  the  Union  army  in  the  struggle  of  the  next 
week. 

Grant's  chief  anxiety  for  some  time  had  been  lest 
Lee  should  abandon  his  lines;  but  though  burning  to 
attack,  he  was  delayed  by  the  same  bad  roads  which 
kept  Lee  in  Richmond,  and  by  another  cause.  He  did 
not  wish  to  move  until  Sheridan  had  completed  the 
work  assigned  him  in  the  Shenandoah  valley  and 
joined  either  Sherman  or  the  army  at  Petersburg.  On 
March  24,  however,  at  the  very  moment  Gordon  was 
making  his  plans  for  next  day's  sortie,  Grant  issued  his 
order  for  the  great  movement  to  the  left  which  was  to 
finish  the  war.  He  intended  to  begin  on  the  twenty- 
ninth,  but  Lee's  desperate  dash  of  the  twenty-fifth  con 
vinced  him  that  not  a  moment  was  to  be  lost.  Sheridan 
reached  City  Point  on  the  twenty-sixth.  Sherman 
came  up  from  North  Carolina  for  a  brief  visit  next 
day.  The  President  was  also  there,  and  an  interesting 
meeting  took  place  between  these  famous  brothers  in 
arms  and  Mr.  Lincoln;  after  which  Sherman  went 
back  to  Goldsboro,  and  Grant  began  pushing  his  army 
to  the  left  with  even  more  than  his  usual  iron  energy. 

It  was  a  great  army — the  result  of  all  the  power  and 
wisdom  of  the  government,  all  the  devotion  of  the 
people,  all  the  intelligence  and  teachableness  of  the  sol 
diers  themselves,  and  all  the  ability  which  a  mighty 
war  had  developed  in  the  officers.  In  command  of  all 
was  Grant,  the  most  extraordinary  military  tempera 
ment  this  country  has  ever  seen.  The  numbers  of  the 


FIVE  FORKS  507 

respective  armies  in  this  last  grapple  have  been  the 
occasion  of  endless  controversy.  As  nearly  as  can  be 
ascertained,  the  grand  total  of  all  arms  on  the  Union 
side  was  124,700;  on  the  Confederate  side,  57,000. 

Grant's  plan,  as  announced  in  his  instructions  of 
March  24,  was  at  first  to  despatch  Sheridan  to  de 
stroy  the  South  Side  and  Danville  railroads,  at  the 
same  time  moving  a  heavy  force  to  the  left  to  insure 
the  success  of  this  raid,  and  then  to  turn  Lee's  position. 
But  his  purpose  developed  from  hour  to  hour,  and  be 
fore  he  had  been  away  from  his  winter  headquarters  one 
day,  he  gave  up  this  comparatively  narrow  scheme, 
and  adopted  the  far  bolder  plan  which  he  carried  out  to 
his  immortal  honor.  He  ordered  Sheridan  not  to  go 
after  the  railroads,  but  to  push  for  the  enemy's  right 
rear,  writing  him :  "I  now  feel  like  ending  the  matter. 
We  will  act  all  together  as  one  army  here,  un 
til  it  is  seen  what  can  be  done  with  the  enemy." 

On  the  thirtieth,  Sheridan  advanced  to  Five  Forks, 
where  he  found  a  heavy  force  of  the  enemy.  Lee, 
justly  alarmed  by  Grant's  movements,  had  despatched 
a  sufficient  detachment  to  hold  that  important  cross 
roads,  and  taken  personal  command  of  the  remainder 
on  White  Oak  Ridge.  A  heavy  -rain-storm,  beginning 
on  the  night  of  the  twenty-ninth  and  continuing  more 
than  twenty-four  hours,  greatly  impeded  the  march 
of  the  troops.  On  the  thirty-first,  Warren,  working  his 
way  toward  the  White  Oak  road,  was  attacked  by  Lee 
and  driven  back  on  the  main  line,  but  rallied,  and  in 
the  afternoon  drove  the  enemy  again  into  his  works. 
Sheridan,  opposed  by  Pickett  with  a  large  force  of  in 
fantry  and  cavalry,  was  also  forced  back,  fighting 
obstinately,  as  far  as  Dinwiddie  Court  House,  from 
which  point  he  hopefully  reported  his  situation  to  Grant 
at  dark.  Grant,  more  disturbed  than  Sheridan  himself, 


508  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

rained  orders  and  suggestions  all  night  to  effect  a 
concentration  at  daylight  on  that  portion  of  the  enemy 
in  front  of  Sheridan;  but  Pickett,  finding  himself  out 
of  position,  silently  withdrew  during  the  night,  and  re 
sumed  his  strongly  intrenched  post  at  Five  Forks. 
Here  Sheridan  followed  him  on  April  i,  and  repeated 
the  successful  tactics  of  his  Shenandoah  valley  exploits 
so  brilliantly  that  Lee's  right  was  entirely  shattered. 

This  battle  of  Five  Forks  should  have  ended  the  war. 
Lee's  right  was  routed ;  his  line  had  been  stretched  west 
ward  until  it  broke;  there  was  no  longer  any  hope  of 
saving  Richmond,  or  even  of  materially  delaying  its 
fall.  But  Lee  apparently  thought  that  even  the  gain 
of  a  day  was  of  value  to  the  Richmond  government, 
and  what  was  left  of  his  Army  of  Northern  Virginia 
was  still  so  perfect  in  discipline  that  it  answered  with 
unabated  spirit  every  demand  made  upon  it.  Grant, 
who  feared  Lee  might  get  away  from  Petersburg  and 
overwhelm  Sheridan  on  the  White  Oak  road,  directed 
that  an  assault  be  made  all  along  the  line  at  four  o'clock 
on  the  morning  of  the  second.  His  officers  responded 
with  enthusiasm;  and  Lee,  far  from  dreaming  of  at 
tacking  any  one  after  the  stunning  blow  he  had  re 
ceived  the  day  before,  made  what  hasty  preparations 
he  could  to  resist  them. 

It  is  painful  to  record  the  hard  fighting  which  fol 
lowed.  Wright,  in  his  assault  in  front  of  Forts  Fisher 
and  Walsh,  lost  eleven  hundred  men  in  fifteen  minutes 
of  murderous  conflict  that  made  them  his  own ;  and 
other  commands  fared  scarcely  better,  Union  and  Con 
federate  troops  alike  displaying  a  gallantry  distress 
ing  to  contemplate  when  one  reflects  that,  the  war 
being  already  decided,  all  this  heroic  blood  was  shed  in 
vain.  The  Confederates,  from  the  Appomattox  to  the 
Weldon  road,  fell  slowly  back  to  their  inner  line  of 


LEE  ORDERS   EVACUATION          509 

works;  and  Lee,  watching  the  formidable  advance  be 
fore  which  his  weakened  troops  gave  way,  sent  a  mes 
sage  to  Richmond  announcing  his  purpose  of  concen 
trating  on  the  Danville  road,  and  made  preparations 
for  the  evacuation  which  was  now  the  only  resort 
left  him. 

Some  Confederate  writers  express  surprise  that  Gen 
eral  Grant  did  not  attack  and  destroy  Lee's  army  on 
April  2;  but  this  is  a  view,  after  the  fact,  easy  to 
express.  The  troops  on  the  Union  left  had  been  on  foot 
for  eighteen  hours,  had  fought  an  important  battle, 
marched  and  countermarched  many  miles,  and  were 
now  confronted  by  Longstreet's  fresh  corps  behind 
formidable  works,  while  the  attitude  of  the  force  under 
Gordon  on  the  south  side  of  the  town  was  such  as  to 
require  the  close  attention  of  Parke.  Grant,  anticipat 
ing  an  early  retirement  of  Lee  from  his  citadel,  wisely 
resolved  to  avoid  the  waste  and  bloodshed  of  an  imme 
diate  assault  on  the  inner  lines  of  Petersburg.  He 
ordered  Sheridan  to  get  upon  Lee's  line  of  retreat ;  sent 
Humphreys  to  strengthen  him ;  then,  directing  a  general 
bombardment  for  five  o'clock  next  morning,  and  an  as 
sault  at  six,  gave  himself  and  his  soldiers  a  little  of  the 
rest  they  had  so  richly  earned  and  so  seriously  needed. 

He  had  telegraphed  during  the  day  to  President  Lin 
coln,  who  was  still  at  City  Point,  the  news  as  it  devel 
oped  from  hour  to  hour.  Prisoners  he  regarded  as  so 
much  net  gain :  he  was  weary  of  slaughter,  and  wanted 
the  war  ended  with  as  little  bloodshed  as  possible ;  and 
it  was  with  delight  that  he  summed  up  on  Sunday 
afternoon :  "The  whole  captures  since  the  army  started 
out  gunning  will  not  amount  to  less  than  twelve  thou 
sand  men,  and  probably  fifty  pieces  of  artillery." 

Lee  bent  all  his  energies  to  saving  his  army  and  lead 
ing  it  out  of  its  untenable  position  on  the  James  to  a 


5io  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

point  from  which  he  could  effect  a  junction  with  John 
ston  in  North  Carolina.  The  place  selected  for  this 
purpose  was  Burkeville,  at  the  crossing  of  the  South 
Side  and  Danville  roads,  fifty  miles  southwest  from 
Richmond,  whence  a  short  distance  would  bring  him 
to  Danville,  where  the  desired  junction  could  be  made. 
Even  yet  he  was  able  to  cradle  himself  in  the  illusion 
that  it  was  only  a  campaign  that  had  failed,  and  that  he 
might  continue  the  war  indefinitely  in  another  field. 
At  nightfall  all  his  preparations  were  completed,  and 
dismounting  at  the  mouth  of  the  road  leading  to 
Amelia  Court  House,  the  first  point  of  rendezvous, 
where  he  had  directed  supplies  to  be  sent,  he  watched 
his  troops  file  noiselessly  by  in  the  darkness.  By  three 
o'clock  the  town  was  abandoned;  at  half-past  four  it 
was  formally  surrendered.  Meade,  reporting  the  news 
to  Grant,  received  orders  to  march  his  army  immedi 
ately  up  the  Appomattox;  and  divining  Lee's  inten 
tions,  Grant  also  sent  word  to  Sheridan  to  push  with 
all  speed  to  the  Danville  road. 

Thus  flight  and  pursuit  began  almost  at  the  same 
moment.  The  swift-footed  Army  of  Northern  Vir 
ginia  was  racing  for  its  life,  and  Grant,  inspired  with 
more  than  his  habitual  tenacity  and  energy,  not  only 
pressed  his  enemy  in  the  rear,  but  hung  upon  his  flank, 
and  strained  every  nerve  to  get  in  his  front.  He  did 
not  even  allow  himself  the  pleasure  of  entering  Rich 
mond,  which  surrendered  to  Weitzel  early  on  the  morn 
ing  of  the  third. 

All  that  day  Lee  pushed  forward  toward  Amelia 
Court  House.  There  was  little  fighting  except  among 
the  cavalry.  A  terrible  disappointment  awaited  Lee 
on  his  arrival  at  Amelia  Court  House  on  the  fourth. 
He  had  ordered  supplies  to  be  forwarded  there,  but  his 
half-starved  troops  found  no  food  awaiting  them, 


PURSUIT  OF  LEE 

and  nearly  twenty-four  hours  were  lost  in  collecting 
subsistence  for  men  and  horses.  When  he  started 
again  on  the  night  of  the  fifth,  the  whole  pursuing 
force  was  south  and  stretching  out  to  the  west  of  him. 
Burkeville  was  in  Grant's  possession;  the  way  to  Dan 
ville  was  barred;  the  supply  of  provisions  to  the  south 
cut  off.  He  was  compelled  to  change  his  route  to  the 
west,  and  started  for  Lynchburg,  which  he  was  des 
tined  never  to  reach. 

It  had  been  the  intention  to  attack  Lee  at  Amelia 
Court  House  on  the  morning  of  April  6,  but  learning 
of  his  turn  to  the  west,  Meade,  who  was  immediately 
in  pursuit,  quickly  faced  his  army  about  and  followed. 
A  running  fight  ensued  for  fourteen  miles,  the  enemy, 
with  remarkable  quickness  and  dexterity,  halting  and 
partly  intrenching  themselves  from  time  to  time,  and 
the  national  forces  driving  them  out  of  every  position ; 
the  Union  cavalry,  meanwhile,  harassing  the  moving 
left  flank  of  the  Confederates,  and  working  havoc  on 
the  trains.  They  also  caused  a  grievous  loss  to  his 
tory  by  burning  Lee's  headquarters  baggage,  with  all 
its  wealth  of  returns  and  reports.  At  Sailor's  Creek, 
a  rivulet  running  north  into  the  Appomattox,  Ewell's 
corps  was  brought  to  bay,  and  important  fighting  oc 
curred  ;  the  day's  loss  to  Lee,  there  and  elsewhere, 
amounting  to  eight  thousand  in  all,  with  several  of  his 
generals  among  the  prisoners.  This  day's  work  was 
of  incalculable  value  to  the  national  arms.  Sheridan's 
unerring  eye  appreciated  the  full  importance  of  it,  his 
hasty  report  ending  with  the  words :  "If  the  thing 
is  pressed,  I  think  that  Lee  will  surrender."  Grant 
sent  the  despatch  to  President  Lincoln,  who  instantly 
replied : 

"Let  the  thing  be  pressed." 

In   fact,   after   nightfall   of   the   sixth,   Lee's   army 


512  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

could  only  flutter  like  a  wounded  bird  with  one  wing 
shattered.  There  was  no  longer  any  possibility  of  es 
cape  ;  but  Lee  found  it  hard  to  relinquish  the  illusion  of 
years,  and  as  soon  as  night  came  down  he  again  began 
his  weary  march  westward.  A  slight  success  on  the 
next  day  once  more  raised  his  hopes ;  but  his  optimism 
was  not  shared  by  his  subordinates,  and  a  number  of 
his  principal  officers,  selecting  General  Pendleton  as 
their  spokesman,  made  known  to  him  on  the  seventh 
their  belief  that  further  resistance  was  useless,  and 
advised  surrender.  Lee  told  them  that  they  had  yet 
too  many  men  to  think  of  laying  down  their  arms, 
but  in  answer  to  a  courteous  summons  from  Grant  sent 
that  same  day,  inquired  what  terms  he  would  be  willing 
to  offer.  Without  waiting  for  a  reply,  he  again  put  his 
men  in  motion,  and  during  all  of  the  eighth  the  chase 
and  pursuit  continued  through  a  part  of  Virginia  green 
with  spring,  and  until  then  unvisited  by  hostile  armies. 

Sheridan,  by  unheard-of  exertions,  at  last  accom 
plished  the  important  task  of  placing  himself  squarely 
on  Lee's  line  of  retreat.  About  sunset  of  the  eighth, 
his  advance  captured  Appomattox  Station  and  four 
trains  of  provisions.  Shortly  after,  a  reconnaissance 
revealed  the  fact  that  Lee's  entire  army  was  coming 
up  the  road.  Though  he  had  nothing  but  cavalry, 
Sheridan  resolved  to  hold  the  inestimable  advantage 
he  had  gained,  and  sent  a  request  to  Grant  to  hurry 
up  the  required  infantry  support;  saying  that  if  it 
reached  him  that  night,  they  "might  perhaps  finish  the 
job  in  the  morning."  He  added,  with  singular  pre 
science,  referring  to  the  negotiations  which  had  been 
opened :  "I  do  not  think  Lee  means  to  surrender  until 
compelled  to  do  so." 

This  was  strictly  true.  When  Grant  replied  to  Lee's 
question  about  terms,  saying  that  the  only  condition 


SURRENDER   OF  LEE  513 

he  insisted  upon  was  that  the  officers  and  men  surren 
dered  should  be  disqualified  from  taking  up  arms  again 
until  properly  exchanged,  Lee  disclaimed  any  inten 
tion  to  surrender  his  army,  but  proposed  to  meet  Grant 
to  discuss  the  restoration  of  peace.  It  appears  from  his 
own  report  that  even  on  the  night  of  the  eighth  he 
had  no  intention  of  giving  up  the  fight.  He  expected 
to  find  only  cavalry  before  him  next  morning,  and 
thought  his  remnant  of  infantry  could  break  through 
while  he  himself  was  amusing  Grant  with  platonic  dis 
cussions  in  the  rear.  But  on  arriving  at  the  rendezvous 
he  had  suggested,  he  received  Grant's  courteous  but 
decided  refusal  to  enter  into  a  political  negotiation,  and 
also  the  news  that  a  formidable  force  of  infantry 
barred  the  way  and  covered  the  adjacent  hills  and  val 
ley.  The  marching  of  the  Confederate  army  was  over 
forever,  and  Lee,  suddenly  brought  to  a  sense  of  his 
real  situation,  sent  orders  to  cease  hostilities,  and  wrote 
another  note  to  Grant,  asking  an  interview  for  the  pur 
pose  of  surrendering  his  army. 

The  meeting  took  place  at  the  house  of  Wilmer 
McLean,  in  the  edge  of  the  village  of  Appomattox,  on 
April  9,  1865.  Lee  met  Grant  at  the  threshold,  and 
ushered  him  into  a  small  and  barely  furnished  parlor, 
where  were  soon  assembled  the  leading  officers  of  the 
national  army.  General  Lee  was  accompanied  only 
by  his  secretary,  Colonel  Charles  Marshall.  A  short 
conversation  led  up  to  a  request  from  Lee  for  the  terms 
on  which  the  surrender  of  his  army  would  be  received. 
Grant  briefly  stated  them,  and  then  wrote  them  out. 
Men  and  officers  were  to  be  paroled,  and  the  arms, 
artillery,  and  public  property  turned  over  to  the  offi 
cer  appointed  to  receive  them. 

"This,"  he  added,  "will  not  embrace  the  side-arms 
of  the  officers,  nor  their  private  horses  or  baggage. 

38 


5H  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

This  done,  each  officer  and  man  will  be  allowed  to 
return  to  their  homes,  not  to  be  disturbed  by  United 
States  authority  so  long  as  they  observe  their  parole 
and  the  laws  in  force  where  they  may  reside." 

General  Grant  says  in  his  "Memoirs"  that  up  to  the 
moment  when  he  put  pen  to  paper  he  had  not  thought 
of  a  word  that  he  should  write.  The  terms  he  had 
verbally  proposed  were  soon  put  in  writing,  and  there 
he  might  have  stopped.  But  as  he  wrote  a  feeling  of 
sympathy  for  his  gallant  antagonist  came  over  him,  and 
he  added  the  extremely  liberal  terms  with  which  his 
letter  closed.  The  sight  of  Lee's  fine  sword  suggested 
the  paragraph  allowing  officers  to  retain  their  side- 
arms  ;  and  he  ended  with  a  phrase  he  evidently  had  not 
thought  of,  and  for  which  he  had  no  authority,  which 
practically  pardoned  and  amnestied  every  man  in 
Lee's  army — a  thing  he  had  refused  to  consider  the  day 
before,  and  which  had  been  expressly  forbidden  him 
in  the  President's  order  of  March  3.  Yet  so  great  was 
the  joy  over  the  crowning  victory,  and  so  deep  the 
gratitude  of  the  government  and  people  to  Grant  and 
his  heroic  army,  that  his  terms  were  accepted  as  he 
wrote  them,  and  his  exercise  of  the  Executive  preroga 
tive  of  pardon  entirely  overlooked.  It  must  be  noticed 
here,  however,  that  a  few  days  later  it  led  the  greatest 
of  Grant's  generals  into  a  serious  error. 

Lee  must  have  read  the  memorandum  with  as  much 
surprise  as  gratification.  He  suggested  and  gained 
another  important  concession — that  those  of  the  cav 
alry  and  artillery  who  owned  their  own  horses  should 
be  allowed  to  take  them  home  to  put  in  their  crops ;  and 
wrote  a  brief  reply  accepting  the  terms.  He  then 
remarked  that  his  army  was  in  a  starving  condition, 
and  asked  Grant  to  provide  them  with  subsistence  and 
forage;  to  which  he  at  once  assented,  inquiring  for 


BURNING  OF  RICHMOND  515 

how  many  men  the  rations  would  be  \vanted.  Lee  an 
swered,  "About  twenty-five  thousand";  and  orders 
were  given  to  issue  them.  The  number  turned  out  to 
be  even  greater,  the  paroles  signed  amounting  to 
twenty-eight  thousand  two  hundred  and  thirty-one. 
If  we  add  to  this  the  captures  made  during  the  preced 
ing  week,  and  the  thousands  who  deserted  the  failing 
cause  at  every  by-road  leading  to  their  homes,  we  see 
how  considerable  an  army  Lee  commanded  when  Grant 
"started  out  gunning." 

With  these  brief  and  simple  formalities,  one  of  the 
most  momentous  transactions  of  modern  times  was 
concluded.  The  Union  gunners  prepared  to  fire  a 
national  salute,  but  Grant  forbade  any  rejoicing  over 
a  fallen  enemy,  who,  he  hoped,  would  be  an  enemy 
no  longer.  The  next  day  he  rode  to  the  Confederate 
lines  to  make  a  visit  of  farewell  to  General  Lee.  They 
parted  with  courteous  good  wishes,  and  Grant,  with 
out  pausing  to  look  at  the  city  he  had  taken,  or  the 
enormous  system  of  works  which  had  so  long  held  him 
at  bay,  hurried  away  to  Washington,  intent  only  upon 
putting  an  end  to  the  waste  and  burden  of  war. 

A  very  carnival  of  fire  and  destruction  had  attended 
the  flight  of  the  Confederate  authorities  from  Rich 
mond.  On  Sunday  night,  April  2,  Jefferson  Davis, 
with  his  cabinet  and  their  more  important  papers,  hur 
riedly  left  the  doomed  city  on  one  of  the  crowded  and 
overloaded  railroad  trains.  The  legislature  of  Vir 
ginia  and  the  governor  of  the  State  departed  in  a 
canal-boat  toward  Lynchburg;  and  every  available 
vehicle  was  pressed  into  service  by  the  frantic  inhab 
itants,  all  anxious  to  get  away  before  their  capital  was 
desecrated  by  the  presence  of  " Yankee  invaders."  By 
the  time  the  military  left,  early  next  morning,  a  con 
flagration  was  already  under  way.  The  rebel  Congress 


516  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

had  passed  a  law  ordering  government  tobacco  and 
other  public  property  to  be  burned.  General  Ewell, 
the  military  commander,  asserts  that  he  took  the  re 
sponsibility  of  disobeying  the  law,  and  that  they  were 
not  fired  by  his  orders.  However  that  may  be,  flames 
broke  out  in  various  parts  of  the  city,  while  a  miscel 
laneous  mob,  inflamed  by  excitement  and  by  the  alcohol 
which  had  run  freely  in  the  gutters  the  night  before, 
rushed  from  store  to  store,  smashing  in  the  doors  and 
indulging  all  the  wantonness  of  pillage  and  greed.  Pub 
lic  spirit  was  paralyzed,  and  the  whole  fabric  of  society 
seemed  crumbling  to  pieces,  when  the  convicts  from  the 
penitentiary,  a  shouting,  leaping  crowd  of  party-colored 
demons,  overcoming  their  guard,  and  drunk  with  lib 
erty,  appeared  upon  the  streets,  adding  their  final 
dramatic  horror  to  the  pandemonium. 

It  is  quite  probable  that  the  very  magnitude  and  ra 
pidity  of  the  disaster  served  in  a  measure  to  mitigate 
its  evil  results.  The  burning  of  seven  hundred  build 
ings,  comprising  the  entire  business  portion  of  Rich 
mond,  warehouses,  manufactories,  mills,  depots,  and 
stores,  all  within  the  brief  space  of  a  day,  was  a  visita 
tion  so  sudden,  so  unexpected,  so  stupefying,  as  to  over 
awe  and  terrorize  even  wrong-doers,  and  made  the 
harvest  of  plunder  so  abundant  as  to  serve  to  scatter  the 
mob  and  satisfy  its  rapacity  to  quick  repletion. 

Before  a  new  hunger  could  arise,  assistance  was  at 
hand.  General  Weitzel,  to  whom  the  city  was  sur 
rendered,  taking  up  his  headquarters  in  the  house 
lately  occupied  by  Jefferson  Davis,  promptly  set  about 
the  work  of  relief;  organizing  efficient  resistance  to 
the  fire,  which,  up  to  this  time,  seems  scarcely  to  have 
been  attempted ;  issuing  rations  to  the  poor,  who  had 
been  relentlessly  exposed  to  starvation  by  the  action  of 
the  rebel  Congress;  and  restoring  order  and  personal 


LINCOLN   IN   RICHMOND  517 

authority.  That  a  regiment  of  black  soldiers  assisted 
in  this  noble  work  must  have  seemed  to  the  white 
inhabitants  of  Richmond  the  final  drop  in  their  cup  of 
misery. 

Into  the  capital,  thus  stricken  and  laid  waste,  came 
President  Lincoln  on  the  morning  of  April  4.  Never 
in  the  history  of  the  world  did  the  head  of  a  mighty 
nation  and  the  conqueror  of  a  great  rebellion  enter  the 
captured  chief  city  of  the  insurgents  in  such  humble 
ness  and  simplicity.  He  had  gone  two  weeks  before 
to  City  Point  for  a  visit  to  General  Grant,  and  to  his 
son,  Captain  Robert  Lincoln,  who  was  serving  on 
Grant's  staff.  Making  his  home  on  the  steamer  which 
brought  him,  and  enjoying  what  was  probably  the 
most  satisfactory  relaxation  in  which  he  had  been  able 
to  indulge  during  his  whole  presidential  service,  he  had 
visited  the  various  camps  of  the  great  army  in  com 
pany  with  the  general,  cheered  everywhere  by  the  lov 
ing  greetings  of  the  soldiers.  He  had  met  Sherman 
when  that  commander  hurried  up  fresh  from  his  victo 
rious  march,  and  after  Grant  started  on  his  final  pur 
suit  of  Lee  the  President  still  lingered;  and  it  was  at 
City  Point  that  he  received  the  news  of  the  fall  of 
Richmond. 

Between  the  receipt  of  this  news  and  the  following 
forenoon,  but  before  any  information  of  the  great  fire 
had  reached  them,  a  visit  was  arranged  for  the  Presi 
dent  and  Rear-Admiral  Porter.  Ample  precautions 
were  taken  at  the  start.  The  President  went  in  his  own 
steamer,  the  River  Queen,  with  her  escort,  the  Bat,  and 
a  tug  used  at  City  Point  in  landing  from  the  steamer. 
Admiral  Porter  went  in  his  flag-ship,  the  Malvern,  and 
a  transport  carried  a  small  cavalry  escort  and  ambu 
lances  for  the  party.  But  the  obstructions  in  the  river 
soon  made  it  impossible  to  proceed  in  this  fashion. 


5i8  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

One  unforeseen  accident  after  another  rendered  it  nec 
essary  to  leave  behind  even  the  smaller  boats,  until 
finally  the  party  went  on  in  Admiral  Porter's  barge, 
rowed  by  t\velve  sailors,  and  without  escort  of  any 
kind.  In  this  manner  the  President  made  his  advent 
into  Richmond,  landing  near  Libby  Prison.  As  the 
party  stepped  ashore  they  found  a  guide  among  the 
contrabands  who  quickly  crowded  the  streets,  for  the 
possible  coming  of  the  President  had  been  circulated 
through  the  city.  Ten  of  the  sailors,  armed  with  car 
bines,  were  formed  as  a  guard,  six  in  front  and  four 
in  rear,  and  between  them  the  President,  Admiral 
Porter,  and  the  three  officers  who  accompanied  them 
walked  the  long  distance,  perhaps  a  mile  and  a  half,  to 
the  center  of  the  town. 

The  imagination  can  easily  fill  up  the  picture  of  a 
gradually  increasing  crowd,  principally  of  negroes, 
following  the  little  group  of  marines  and  officers,  with 
the  tall  form  of  the  President  in  its  center ;  and,  having 
learned  that  it  was  indeed  Mr.  Lincoln,  giving  ex 
pression  to  joy  and  gratitude  in  the  picturesque  emo 
tional  ejaculations  of  the  colored  race.  It  is  easy  also 
to  imagine  the  sharp  anxiety  of  those  who  had  the 
President's  safety  in  charge  during  this  tiresome  and 
even  foolhardy  march  through  a  city  still  in  flames, 
whose  white  inhabitants  were  sullenly  resentful  at  best, 
and  whose  grief  and  anger  might  at  any  moment  culmi 
nate  against  the  man  they  looked  upon  as  the  incarna 
tion  of  their  misfortunes.  But  no  accident  befell  him. 
Reaching  General  Weitzel's  headquarters,  Mr.  Lincoln 
rested  in  the  mansion  Jefferson  Davis  had  occupied  as 
President  of  the  Confederacy,  and  after  a  day  of  sight 
seeing  returned  to  his  steamer  and  to  Washington,  to 
be  stricken  down  by  an  assassin's  bullet,  literally  "in 
the  house  of  his  friends." 


XXXVI 

Lincoln's  Interviews  with  Campbell — Withdraws  Author 
ity  for  Meeting  of  Virginia  Legislature — Conference 
of  Davis  and  Johnston  at  Greensboro  — Johnston  Asks 
for  an  Armistice — Meeting  of  Sherman  and  Johnston 
— Their  Agreement — Rejected  at  Washington — Sur 
render  of  Johnston — Surrender  of  other  Confederate 
Forces — End  of  the  Rebel  Navy — Capture  of  Jefferson 
Davis — Surrender  of  E.  Kirby  Smith — Number  of 
Confederates  Surrendered  and  Exchanged — Reduction 
of  Federal  Army  to  a  Peace  Footing — Grand  Review 
of  the  Army 

"YtTTHILE  in  Richmond,  Mr.  Lincoln  had  two  inter- 
NY  views  with  John  A.  Campbell,  rebel  Secretary 
of  War,  who  had  not  accompanied  the  other  fleeing  offi 
cials,  preferring  instead  to  submit  to  Federal  authority. 
Mr.  Campbell  had  been  one  of  the  commissioners  at  the 
Hampton  Roads  conference,  and  Mr.  Lincoln  now  gave 
him  a  written  memorandum  repeating  in  substance  the 
terms  he  had  then  offered  the  Confederates.  On  Camp 
bell's  suggestion  that  the  Virginia  legislature,  if  al 
lowed  to  come  together,  would  at  once  repeal  its  ordi 
nance  of  secession  and  withdraw  all  Virginia  troops 
from  the  field,  he  also  gave  permission  for  its  members 
to  assemble  for  that  purpose.  But  this,  being  distorted 
into  authority  to  sit  in  judgment  on  the  political  con 
sequences  of  the  war,  was  soon  withdrawn. 

Jefferson  Davis  and  his  cabinet  proceeded  to  Dan 
ville,  where,  two  days  after  his  arrival,  the  rebel  Presi 
dent  made  still  another  effort  to  fire  the  Southern  heart, 

519 


520  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

announcing,  "We  have  now  entered  upon  a  new 
phase  of  the  struggle.  Relieved  from  the  necessity  of 
guarding  particular  points,  our  army  will  be  free  to 
move  from  point  to  point  to  strike  the  enemy  in  detail 
far  from  his  base.  Let  us  but  will  it  and  we  are  free" ; 
and  declaring  in  sonorous  periods  his  purpose  never  to 
abandon  one  foot  of  ground  to  the  invader. 

The  ink  was  hardly  dry  on  the  document  when  news 
came  of  the  surrender  of  Lee's  army,  and  that  the 
Federal  cavalry  was  pushing  southward  west  of  Dan 
ville.  So  the  Confederate  government  again  hastily 
packed  its  archives  and  moved  to  Greensboro,  North 
Carolina,  where  its  headquarters  were  prudently  kept 
on  the  train  at  the  depot.  Here  Mr.  Davis  sent  for 
Generals  Johnston  and  Beauregard,  and  a  conference 
took  place  between  them  and  the  members  of  the  fleeing 
government — a  conference  not  unmixed  with  em 
barrassment,  since  Mr.  Davis  still  "willed"  the  success 
of  the  Confederacy  too  strongly  to  see  the  true  hope 
lessness  of  the  situation,  while  the  generals  and  most 
of  his  cabinet  were  agreed  that  their  cause  was  lost. 
The  council  of  war  over,  General  Johnston  returned  to 
his  army  to  begin  negotiations  with  Sherman;  and  on 
the  following  day,  April  14,  Davis  and  his  party 'left 
Greensboro  to  continue  their  journey  southward. 

Sherman  had  returned  to  Goldsboro  from  his  visit 
to  City  Point,  and  set  himself  at  once  to  the  reorgan 
ization  of  his  army  and  the  replenishment  of  his  stores. 
He  still  thought  there  was  a  hard  campaign  with  des 
perate  fighting  ahead  of  him.  Even  on  April  6,  when 
he  received  news  of  the  fall  of  Richmond  and  the 
flight  of  Lee  and  the  Confederate  government,  he  was 
unable  to  understand  the  full  extent  of  the  national 
triumph.  He  admired  Grant  so  far  as  a  man  might, 
short  of  idolatry,  yet  the  long  habit  of  respect  for  Lee 
led  him  to  think  he  would  somehow  gfet  away  and  join 


JOHNSTON  ASKS  ARMISTICE         521 

Johnston  in  his  front  with  at  least  a  portion  of  the 
Army  of  Northern  Virginia.  He  had  already  begun 
his  march  upon  Johnston  when  he  learned  of  Lee's  sur 
render  at  Appomattox. 

Definitely  relieved  from  apprehension  of  a  junction 
of  the  two  Confederate  armies,  he  now  had  no  fear  ex 
cept  of  a  flight  and  dispersal  of  Johnston's  forces  into 
guerrilla  bands.  If  they  ran  away,  he  felt  he  could  not 
catch  them;  the  country  was  too  open.  They  could 
scatter  and  meet  again,  and  so  continue  a  partizan 
warfare  indefinitely.  He  could  not  be  expected  to 
know  that  this  resolute  enemy  was  sick  to  the  heart  of 
war,  and  that  the  desire  for  more  fighting  survived  only 
in  a  group  of  fugitive  politicians  flying  through  the 
pine  forests  of  the  Carolinas  from  a  clanger  which  did 
not  exist. 

Entering  Raleigh  on  the  morning  of  the  thirteenth, 
he  turned  his  heads  of  column  southwest,  hoping  to 
cut  off  Johnston's  southward  march,  but  made  no 
great  haste,  thinking  Johnston's  cavalry  superior  to 
his  own,  and  desiring  Sheridan  to  join  him  before  he 
pushed  the  Confederates  to  extremities.  While  here, 
however,  he  received  a  communication  from  General 
Johnston,  dated  the  thirteenth,  proposing  an  armistice 
to  enable  the  National  and  Confederate  governments 
to  negotiate  on  equal  terms.  It  had  been  dictated  by 
Jefferson  Davis  during  the  conference  at  Greensboro, 
written  down  by  S.  R.  Mallory,  and  merely  signed  by 
Johnston,  and  was  inadmissible  and  even  offensive  in 
its  terms;  but  Sherman,  anxious  for  peace,  and  him 
self  incapable  of  discourtesy  to  a  brave  enemy,  took  no 
notice  of  its  language,  and  answered  so  cordially  that 
the  Confederates  were  probably  encouraged  to  ask  for 
better  conditions  of  surrender  than  they  had  expected 
to  receive. 

The  two  great  antagonists  met  on  April  17,  when 


522  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Sherman  offered  Johnston  the  same  terms  that  had  been 
accorded  Lee,  and  also  communicated  the  news  he  had 
that  morning  received  of  the  murder  of  Mr.  Lincoln. 
The  Confederate  general  expressed  his  unfeigned  sor 
row  at  this  calamity,  which  smote  the  South,  he  said, 
as  deeply  as  the  North;  and  in  this  mood  of  sympathy 
the  discussion  began.  Johnston  asserted  that  he  would 
not  be  justified  in  such  a  capitulation  as  Sherman  pro 
posed,  but  suggested  that  together  they  might  arrange 
the  terms  of  a  permanent  peace.  This  idea  pleased 
Sherman,  to  whom  the  prospect  of  ending  the  war  with 
out  shedding  another  drop  of  blood  was  so  tempting 
that  he  did  not  sufficiently  consider  the  limits  of  his 
authority  in  the  matter.  It  can  be  said,  moreover,  in 
extenuation  of  his  course,  that  President  Lincoln's 
despatch  to  Grant  of  March  3,  which  expressly  for 
bade  Grant  to  "decide,  discuss,  or  to  confer  upon  any 
political  question,"  had  never  been  communicated  to 
Sherman;  while  the  very  liberality  of  Grant's  terms 
led  him  to  believe  that  he  was  acting  in  accordance  with 
the  views  of  the  administration. 

But  the  wisdom  of  Lincoln's  peremptory  order  was 
completely  vindicated.  With  the  best  intentions  in  the 
world,  Sherman,  beginning  very  properly  by  offering 
his  antagonist  the  same  terms  accorded  Lee,  ended, 
after  two  days'  negotiation,  by  making  a  treaty  of  peace 
with  the  Confederate  States,  including  a  preliminary 
armistice,  the  disbandment  of  the  Confederate  armies, 
recognition  by  the  United  States  Executive  of  the 
several  State  governments,  reestablishment  of  the  Fed 
eral  courts,  and  a  general  amnesty.  "Not  being  fully 
empowered  by  our  respective  principals  to  fulfil  these 
terms,"  the  agreement  truthfully  concluded,  "we  indi 
vidually  and  officially  pledge  ourselves  to  promptly 
obtain  the  necessary  authority." 


AGREEMENT   REJECTED  523 

The  rebel  President,  with  unnecessary  formality,  re 
quired  a  report  from  General  Breckinridge,  his  Secre 
tary  of  War,  on  the  desirability  of  ratifying  this  most 
favorable  convention.  Scarcely  had  he  given  it  his 
indorsement  when  news  came  that  it  had  been  disap 
proved  at  Washington,  and  that  Sherman  had  been 
directed  to  continue  his  military  operations;  and  the 
peripatetic  government  once  more  took  up  its  south 
ward  flight. 

The  moment  General  Grant  read  the  agreement  he 
saw  it  was  entirely  inadmissible.  The  new  President 
called  his  cabinet  together,  and  Mr.  Lincoln's  instruc 
tions  of  March  3  to  Grant  were  repeated  to  Sherman — 
somewhat  tardily,  it  must  be  confessed — as  his  rule  of 
action.  All  this  was  a  matter  of  course,  and  General 
Sherman  could  not  properly,  and  perhaps  would  not, 
have  objected  to  it.  But  the  calm  spirit  of  Lincoln  was 
now  absent  from  the  councils  of  the  government;  and 
it  was  not  in  Andrew  Johnson  and  Mr.  Stanton  to  pass 
over  a  mistake  like  this,  even  in  the  case  of  one  of  the 
most  illustrious  captains  of  the  age.  They  ordered 
Grant  to  proceed  at  once  to  Sherman's  headquarters, 
and  to  direct  operations  against  the  enemy;  and,  what 
was  worse,  Mr.  Stanton  printed  in  the  newspapers  the 
reasons  of  the  government  for  disapproving  the  agree 
ment,  in  terms  of  sharpest  censure  of  General  Sherman. 
This,  when  it  came  to  his  notice  some  weeks  later,  filled 
him  with  hot  indignation,  and,  coupled  with  some  or 
ders  Halleck,  who  had  been  made  commander  of  the 
armies  of  the  Potomac  and  the  James,  issued  to  Meade, 
to  disregard  Sherman's  truce  and  push  forward  against 
Johnston,  roused  him  to  open  defiance  of  the  authorities 
he  thought  were  persecuting  him,  and  made  him  de 
clare,  in  a  report  to  Grant,  that  he  would  have  main 
tained  his  truce  at  anv  cost  of  life.  Halleck's  order, 


524  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

however,  had  been  nullified  by  Johnston's  surrender, 
and  Grant,  suggesting  that  this  outburst  was  uncalled 
for,  offered  Sherman  the  opportunity  to  correct  the 
statement.  This  he  refused,  insisting  that  his  record 
stand  as  written,  although  avowing  his  readiness  to 
obey  all  future  orders  of  Grant  and  the  President. 

So  far  as  Johnston  was  concerned,  the  war  was  in 
deed  over.  He  was  unable  longer  to  hold  his  men 
together.  Eight  thousand  of  them  left  their  camps  and 
went  home  in  the  week  of  the  truce,  many  riding  away 
on  the  artillery  horses  and  train  mules.  On  notice  of 
Federal  disapproval  of  his  negotiations  with  Sherman, 
he  disregarded  Jefferson  Davis's  instructions  to  dis 
band  the  infantry  and  try  to  escape  with  the  cavalry 
and  light  guns,  and  answered  Sherman's  summons  by 
inviting  another  conference,  at  which,  on  April  26,  he 
surrendered  all  the  forces  in  his  command  on  the  same 
terms  granted  Lee  at  Appomattox ;  Sherman  supplying, 
as  did  Grant,  rations  for  the  beaten  army.  Thirty- 
seven  thousand  men  and  officers  were  paroled  in  North 
Carolina — exclusive,  of  course,  of  the  thousands  who 
had  slipped  away  to  their  homes  during  the  suspension 
of  hostilities. 

After  Appomattox  the  rebellion  fell  to  pieces  all  at 
once.  Lee  surrendered  less  than  one  sixth  of  the  Con 
federates  in  arms  on  April  9.  The  armies  that  still 
remained,  though  inconsiderable  when  compared  with 
the  mighty  host  under  the  national  colors,  were  yet  infi 
nitely  larger  than  any  Washington  ever  commanded, 
and  capable  of  strenuous  resistance  and  of  incalculable 
mischief.  But  the  march  of  Sherman  from  Atlanta  to 
the  sea,  and  his  northward  progress  through  the  Caro- 
linas,  had  predisposed  the  great  interior  region  to  make 
an  end  of  strife :  a  tendency  which  was  greatly  pro 
moted  by  the  masterly  raid  of  General  J.  H.  Wilson's 


END   OF  THE   REBEL   NAVY         525 

cavalry  through  Alabama,  and  his  defeat  of  Forrest  at 
Selma.  An  officer  of  Taylor's  staff  came  to  Canby's 
headquarters  on  April  19  to  make  arrangements  for 
the  surrender  of  all  the  Confederate  forces  east  of  the 
Mississippi  not  already  paroled  by  Sherman  and  Wil 
son,  embracing  some  forty-two  thousand  men.  The 
terms  were  agreed  upon  and  signed  on  May  4,  at  the 
village  of  Citronelle  in  Alabama.  At  the  same  time 
and  place  the  Confederate  Commodore  Farrand  sur 
rendered  to  Rear- Admiral  Thatcher  all  the  naval  forces 
of  the  Confederacy  in  the  neighborhood  of  Mobile — a 
dozen  vessels  and  some  hundreds  of  officers. 

The  rebel  navy  had  practically  ceased  to  exist  some 
months  before.  The  splendid  fight  in  Mobile  Bay  on 
August  5,  1864,  between  Farragut's  fleet  and  the  rebel 
ram  Tennessee,  with  her  three  attendant  gunboats,  and 
Cushing's  daring  destruction  of  the  powerful  Albe- 
marle  in  Albemarle  Sound  on  October  27,  marked  its 
end  in  Confederate  waters.  The  duel  between  the 
Kearsarge  and  the  Alabama  off  Cherbourg  had  already 
taken  place ;  a  few  more  encounters,  at  or  near  foreign 
ports,  furnished  occasion  for  personal  bravery  and  sub 
sequent  lively  diplomatic  correspondence;  and  rebel 
vessels,  fitted  out  under  the  unduly  lenient  "neutrality" 
of  France  and  England,  continued  for  a  time  to  work 
havoc  with  American  shipping  in  various  parts  of  the 
world.  But  these  two  Union  successes,  and  the  final 
capture  of  Fort  Fisher  and  of  Wilmington  early  in 
1865,  which  closed  the  last  haven  for  daring  blockade- 
runners,  practically  silenced  the  Confederate  navy. 

General  E.  Kirby  Smith  commanded  all  the  insur 
gent  forces  west  of  the  Mississippi.  On  him  the  des 
perate  hopes  of  Mr.  Davis  and  his  flying  cabinet  were 
fixed,  after  the  successive  surrenders  of  Lee  and  John 
ston  had  left  them  no  prospect  in  the  east.  They  im- 


526  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

agined  they  could  move  westward,  gathering  up  strag 
glers  as  they  fled,  and,  crossing  the  river,  join  Smith's 
forces,  and  there  continue  the  war.  But  after  a  time 
even  this  hope  failed  them.  Their  escort  melted  away ; 
members  of  the  cabinet  dropped  off  on  various  pretexts, 
and  Mr.  Davis,  abandoning  the  attempt  to  reach  the 
Mississippi  River,  turned  again  toward  the  east  in  an 
effort  to  gain  the  Florida  coast  and  escape  by  means 
of  a  sailing  vessel  to  Texas. 

The  two  expeditions  sent  in  pursuit  of  him  by  Gen 
eral  Wilson  did  not  allow  this  consummation,  which 
the  government  at  Washington  might  possibly  have 
viewed  with  equanimity.  His  camp  near  Irwinville, 
Georgia,  was  surrounded  by  Lieutenant-Colonel  Prit- 
chard's  command  at  dawn  on  May  10,  and  he  was 
captured  as  he  was  about  to  mount  horse  with  a  few 
companions  and  ride  for  the  coast,  leaving  his  fam 
ily  to  follow  more  slowly.  The  tradition  that  he  was 
captured  in  disguise,  having  donned  female  dress  in 
a  last  desperate  attempt  to  escape,  has  only  this  foun 
dation,  that  Mrs.  Davis  threw  a  cloak  over  her  hus 
band's  shoulders,  and  a  shawl  over  his  head,  on  the 
approach  of  the  Federal  soldiers.  He  was  taken  to 
Fortress  Monroe,  and  there  kept  in  confinement  for 
about  two  years;  was  arraigned  before  the  United 
States  Circuit  Court  for  the  District  of  Virginia  for  the 
crime  of  treason,  and  released  on  bail ;  and  was  finally 
restored  to  all  the  duties  and  privileges  of  citizen 
ship,  except  the  right  to  hold  office,  by  President  John 
son's  proclamation  of  amnesty  of  December  25,  1868. 

General  E.  Kirby  Smith,  on  whom  Davis's  last  hopes 
of  success  had  centered,  kept  up  so  threatening  an  at 
titude  that  Sherman  was  sent  from  Washington  to 
bring  him  to  reason.  But  he  did  not  long  hold  his 
position  of  solitary  defiance.  One  more  needless 


GRAND   REVIEW  OF  THE  ARMY     527 

skirmish  took  place  near  Brazos,  Texas,  and  then 
Smith  followed  the  example  of  Taylor  and  surrendered 
his  entire  force,  some  eighteen  thousand,  to  General 
Canby,  on  May  26.  One  hundred  and  seventy-five 
thousand  men  in  all  were  surrendered  by  the  different 
Confederate  commanders,  and  there  were,  in  addition 
to  these,  about  ninety-nine  thousand  prisoners  in  na 
tional  custody  during  the  year.  One  third  of  these 
were  exchanged,  and  two  thirds  released.  This  was 
done  as  rapidly  as  possible  by  successive  orders  of  the 
War  Department,  beginning  on  May  9  and  continu 
ing  through  the  summer. 

The  first  object  of  the  government  was  to  stop  the 
waste  of  war.  Recruiting  ceased  immediately  after 
Lee's  surrender,  and  measures  were  taken  to  reduce 
as  promptly  as  possible  the  vast  military  establishment. 
Every  chief  of  bureau  was  ordered,  on  April  28,  to 
proceed  at  once  to  the  reduction  of  expenses  in  his 
department  to  a  peace  footing;  and  this  before  Taylor 
or  Smith  had  surrendered,  and  while  Jefferson  Davis 
was  still  at  large.  The  army  of  a  million  men  was 
brought  down,  with  incredible  ease  and  celerity,  to  one 
of  twenty-five  thousand. 

Before  the  great  army  melted  away  into  the  greater 
body  of  citizens,  the  soldiers  enjoyed  one  final  triumph, 
a  march  through  the  capital,  undisturbed  by  death  or 
danger,  under  the  eyes  of  their  highest  commanders, 
military  and  civilian,  and  the  representatives  of  the 
people  whose  nationality  they  had  saved.  Those  who 
witnessed  this  solemn  yet  joyous  pageant  will  never  for 
get  it,  and  will  pray  that  their  children  may  never  wit 
ness  anything  like  it.  For  two  days  this  formidable 
host  marched  the  long  stretch  of  Pennsylvania  Avenue, 
starting  from  the  shadow  of  the  dome  of  the  Capitol, 
and  filling  that  wide  thoroughfare  to  Georgetown  with 


528  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

a  serried  mass,  moving  with  the  easy  yet  rapid  pace 
of  veterans  in  cadence  step.  As  a  mere  spectacle  this 
march  of  the  mightiest  host  the  continent  has  ever  seen 
gathered  together  was  grand  and  imposing;  but  it  was 
not  as  a  spectacle  alone  that  it  affected  the  beholder 
most  deeply.  It  was  not  a  mere  holiday  parade ;  it  was 
an  army  of  citizens  on  their  way  home  after  a  long  and 
terrible  war.  Their  clothes  were  worn  and  pierced  with 
bullets ;  their  banners  had  been  torn  with  shot  and  shell, 
and  lashed  in  the  winds  of  a  thousand  battles ;  the  very 
drums  and  fifes  had  called  out  the  troops  to  number 
less  night  alarms,  and  sounded  the  onset  on  historic 
fields.  The  whole  country  claimed  these  heroes  as  a 
part  of  themselves.  And  now,  done  with  fighting, 
they  were  going  joyously  and  peaceably  to  their  homes, 
to  take  up  again  the  tasks  they  had  willingly  laid  down 
in  the  hour  of  their  country's  peril. 

The  world  had  many  lessons  to  learn  from  this  great 
conflict,  which  liberated  a  subject  people  and  changed 
the  tactics  of  modern  warfare;  but  the  greatest  lesson 
it  taught  the  nations  of  waiting  Europe  was  the  con 
servative  power  of  democracy — that  a  million  men, 
flushed  with  victory,  and  with  arms  in  their  hands, 
could  be  trusted  to  disband  the  moment  the  need  for 
their  services  was  over,  and  take  up  again  the  soberer 
labors  of  peace. 

Friends  loaded  these  veterans  with  flowers  as  they 
swung  down  the  Avenue,  both  men  and  officers,  until 
some  were  fairly  hidden  under  their  fragrant  burden. 
There  was  laughter  and  applause;  grotesque  figures 
were  not  absent  as  Sherman's  legions  passed,  with  their 
"bummers"  and  their  regimental  pets;  but  with  all  the 
shouting  and  the  laughter  and  the  joy  of  this  unprece 
dented  ceremony,  there  was  one  sad  and  dominant 
thought  which  could  not  be  driven  from  the  minds  of 


GRAND   REVIEW  OF  THE  ARMY     529 

those  who  saw  it — that  of  the  men  who  were  absent, 
and  who  had,  nevertheless,  richly  earned  the  right  to 
be  there.  The  soldiers  in  their  shrunken  companies 
were  conscious  of  the  ever-present  memories  of  the 
brave  comrades  who  had  fallen  by  the  way ;  and  in  the 
whole  army  there  was  the  passionate  and  unavailing 
regret  for  their  wise,  gentle,  and  powerful  friend, 
Abraham  Lincoln,  gone  forever  from  the  house  by  the 
Avenue,  who  had  called  the  great  host  into  being, 
directed  the  course  of  the  nation  during  the  four  years 
they  had  been  fighting  for  its  preservation,  and  for 
whom,  more  than  for  any  other,  this  crowning  peaceful 
pageant  would  have  been  fraught  with  deep  and  happy 
meaning. 


34 


XXXVII 

The  I4th  of  April — Celebration  at  Fort  Sumter — Last 
Cabinet  Meeting — Lincoln's  Attitude  toward  Threats 
of  Assassination — Booth's  Plot — Ford's  Theater — Fate 
of  the  Assassins — The  Mourning  Pageant 

MR.  LINCOLN  had  returned  to  Washington,  re 
freshed  by  his  visit  to  City  Point,  and  cheered  by 
the  unmistakable  signs  that  the  war  was  almost  over. 
With  that  ever-present  sense  of  responsibility  which 
distinguished  him,  he  gave  his  thoughts  to  the  momen 
tous  question  of  the  restoration  of  the  Union  and  of 
harmony  between  the  lately  warring  sections.  His 
whole  heart  was  now  enlisted  in  the  work  of  "binding 
up  the  nation's  wounds,"  and  of  doing  all  which  might 
"achieve  and  cherish  a  just  and  lasting  peace." 

April  14  was  a  day  of  deep  and  tranquil  happiness 
throughout  the  United  States.  It  was  Good  Friday,  ob 
served  by  a  portion  of  the  people  as  an  occasion  of 
fasting  and  religious  meditation;  though  even  among 
the  most  devout  the  great  tidings  of  the  preceding  week 
exerted  their  joyous  influence,  and  changed  this  period 
of  traditional  mourning  into  an  occasion  of  general 
thanksgiving.  But  though  the  Misereres  turned  of 
themselves  to  Te  Deums,  the  date  was  not  to  lose  its 
awful  significance  in  the  calendar :  at  night  it  was 
claimed  once  more  by  a  world-wide  sorrow. 

The  thanksgiving  of  the  nation  found  its  principal 
expression  at  Charleston  Harbor,  where  the  flag  of  the 
Union  received  that  day  a  conspicuous  reparation  on 

530 


LAST   CABINET   MEETING  53 1 

the  spot  where  it  had  first  been  outraged.  At  noon 
General  Robert  Anderson  raised  over  Fort  Sumter  the 
indentical  flag  lowered  and  saluted  by  him  four  years 
before;  the  surrender  of  Lee  giving  a  more  tran 
scendent  importance  to  this  ceremony,  made  stately 
with  orations,  music,  and  military  display. 

In  Washington  it  was  a  day  of  deep  peace  and 
thankfulness.  Grant  had  arrived  that  morning,  and, 
going  to  the  Executive  Mansion,  had  met  the  cabinet, 
Friday  being  their  regular  day  for  assembling.  He  ex 
pressed  some  anxiety  as  to  the  news  from  Sherman 
which  he  was  expecting  hourly.  The  President  an 
swered  him  in  that  singular  vein  of.  poetic  mysticism 
which,  though  constantly  held  in  check  by  his  strong 
common  sense,  formed  such  a  remarkable  element  in 
his  character.  He  assured  Grant  that  the  news  would 
come  soon  and  come  favorably,  for  he  had  last  night 
had  his  usual  dream  which  preceded  great  events.  He 
seemed  to  be,  he  said,  in  a  singular  and  indescribable 
vessel,  but  always  the  same,  moving  with  great  rapidity 
toward  a  dark  and  indefinite  shore;  he  had  had  this 
dream  before  Antietam,  Murfreesboro,  Gettysburg,  and 
Vicksburg.  The  cabinet  were  greatly  impressed  by  this 
story ;  but  Grant,  most  matter-of-fact  of  created  beings, 
made  the  characteristic  response  that  "Murfreesboro 
was  no  victory,  and  had  no  important  results."  The 
President  did  not  argue  this  point  with  him,  but  re 
peated  that  Sherman  would  beat  or  had  beaten  John 
ston  ;  that  his  dream  must  relate  to  that,  since  he  knew 
of  no  other  important  event  likely  at  present  to  occur. 

Questions  of  trade  between  the  States,  and  of  vari 
ous  phases  of  reconstruction,  occupied  the  cabinet 
on  this  last  day  of  Lincoln's  firm  and  tolerant  rule. 
The  President  spoke  at  some  length,  disclosing  his 
hope  that  much  could  be  done  to  reanimate  the  States 


532  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

and  get  their  governments  in  successful  operation  be 
fore  Congress  came  together.  He  was  anxious  to  close 
the  period  of  strife  without  over-much  discussion. 
Particularly  did  he  desire  to  avoid  the  shedding  of 
blood,  or  any  vindictiveness  of  punishment.  "No  one 
need  expect  that  he  would  take  any  part  in  hanging 
or  killing  these  men,  even  the  worst  of  them." 
"Enough  lives  have  been  sacrificed,"  he  exclaimed ; 
"we  must  extinguish  our  resentments  if  we  expect  har 
mony  and  union."  He  did  not  wish  the  autonomy  nor 
the  individuality  of  the  States  disturbed;  and  he 
closed  the  session  by  commending  the  whole  subject 
to  the  most  careful  consideration  of  his  advisers.  It 
was,  he  said,  the  great  question  pending — they  must 
now  begin  to  act  in  the  interest  of  peace.  Such  were 
the  last  words  that  Lincoln  spoke  to  his  cabinet.  They 
dispersed  with  these  sentences  of  clemency  and  good 
will  in  their  ears,  never  again  to  meet  under  his  wise 
and  benignant  chairmanship.  He  had  told  them  that 
morning  a  strange  story,  which  made  some  demand 
upon  their  faith,  but  the  circumstances  under  which 
they  were  next  to  come  together  were  beyond  the  scope 
of  the  wildest  fancy. 

The  day  was  one  of  unusual  enjoyment  to  Mr.  Lin 
coln.  His  son  Robert  had  returned  from  the  field  with 
General  Grant,  and  the  President  spent  an  hour  with 
the  young  captain  in  delighted  conversation  over  the 
campaign.  He  denied  himself  generally  to  the  throng 
of  visitors,  admitting  only  a  few  friends.  In  the 
afternoon  he  went  for  a  long  drive  with  Mrs.  Lincoln. 
His  mood,  as  it  had  been  all  day,  was  singularly  happy 
and  tender.  He  talked  much  of  the  past  and  future; 
after  four  years  of  trouble  and  tumult  he  looked  for 
ward  to  four  years  of  comparative  quiet  and  normal 
work ;  after  that  he  expected  to  go  back  to  Illinois  and 


THREATS   OF  ASSASSINATION       533 

practise  law  again.  He  was  never  simpler  or  gentler 
than  on  this  day  of  unprecedented  triumph ;  his  heart 
overflowed  with  sentiments  of  gratitude  to  Heaven, 
which  took  the  shape,  usual  to  generous  natures,  of  love 
and  kindness  to  all  men. 

From  the  very  beginning  of  his  presidency,  Mr.  Lin 
coln  had  been  constantly  subject  to  the  threats  of  his 
enemies.  His  mail  was  infested  with  brutal  and  vulgar 
menace,  and  warnings  of  all  sorts  came  to  him  from 
zealous  or  nervous  friends.  Most  of  these  communica 
tions  received  no  notice.  In  cases  where  there  seemed 
a  ground  for  inquiry,  it  was  made,  as  carefully  as  pos 
sible,  by  the  President's  private  secretary,  or  by  the 
War  Department;  but  always  without  substantial  re 
sult.  Warnings  that  appeared  most  definite,  when  ex 
amined,  proved  too  vague  and  confused  for  further 
attention.  The  President  was  too  intelligent  not  to 
know  that  he  was  in  some  danger.  Madmen  frequently 
made  their  way  to  the  very  door  of  the  executive  office, 
and  sometimes  into  Mr.  Lincoln's  presence.  But  he 
had  himself  so  sane  a  mind,  and  a  heart  so  kindly, 
even  to  his  enemies,  that  it  was  hard  for  him  to  be 
lieve  in  political  hatred  so  deadly  as  to  lead  to  murder. 

He  knew,  indeed,  that  incitements  to  murder  him 
were  not  uncommon  in  the  South,  but  as  is  the  habit 
of  men  constitutionally  brave,  he  considered  the  pos 
sibilities  of  danger  remote,  and  positively  refused  to 
torment  himself  with  precautions  for  his  own  safety ; 
summing  the  matter  up  by  saying  that  both  friends  and 
strangers  must  have  daily  access  to  him ;  that  his  life 
was  therefore  in  reach  of  any  one,  sane  or  mad,  who 
was  ready  to  murder  and  be  hanged  for  it ;  and  that  he 
could  not  possibly  guard  against  all  danger  unless  he 
shut  himself  up  in  an  iron  box,  in  which  condition  he 
could  scarcely  perform  the  duties  of  a  President.  He 


534  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

therefore  went  in  and  out  before  the  people,  always 
unarmed,  generally  unattended.  He  received  hun 
dreds  of  visitors  in  a  day,  his  breast  bare  to  pistol  or 
knife.  He  walked  at  midnight,  with  a  single  secretary, 
or  alone,  from  the  Executive  Mansion  to  the  War  De 
partment  and  back.  He  rode  through  the  lonely  roads 
of  an  uninhabited  suburb  from  the  White  House  to  the 
Soldiers'  Home  in  the  dusk  of  the  evening,  and  re 
turned  to  his  work  in  the  morning  before  the  town  was 
astir.  He  was  greatly  annoyed  when  it  was  decided 
that  there  must  be  a  guard  at  the  Executive  Mansion, 
and  that  a  squad  of  cavalry  must  accompany  him  on  his 
daily  drive;  but  he  was  always  reasonable,  and  yielded 
to  the  best  judgment  of  others. 

Four  years  of  threats  and  boastings  that  were  un 
founded,  and  of  plots  that  came  to  nothing,  thus  passed 
away;  but  precisely  at  the  time  when  the  triumph  of 
the  nation  seemed  assured,  and  a  feeling  of  peace  and 
security  was  diffused  over  the  country,  one  of  the 
conspiracies,  apparently  no  more  important  than  the 
others,  ripened  in  the  sudden  heat  of  hatred  and  despair. 
A  little  band  of  malignant  secessionists,  consisting  of 
John  Wilkes  Booth,  an  actor  of  a  family  of  famous 
players;  Lewis  Powell,  alias  Payne,  a  disbanded  rebel 
soldier  from  Florida;  George  Atzerodt,  formerly  a 
coachmaker,  but  more  recently  a  spy  and  blockade- 
runner  of  the  Potomac;  David  E.  Herold,  a  young 
druggist's  clerk;  Samuel  Arnold  and  Michael 
O'Laughlin,  Maryland  secessionists  and  Confederate 
soldiers ;  and  John  H.  Surratt,  had  their  ordinary  ren 
dezvous  at  the  house  of  Mrs.  Mary  E.  Surratt,  the 
widowed  mother  of  the  last  named,  formerly  a  woman 
of  some  property  in  Maryland,  but  reduced  by  reverses 
to  keeping  a  small  boarding-house  in  Washington. 

Booth  was  the  leader  of  the  little  coterie.    He  was  a 


JOHN  WILKES  BOOTH  535 

young  man  of  twenty-six,  strikingly  handsome,  with 
that  ease  and  grace  of  manner  which  came  to  him  of 
right  from  his  theatrical  ancestors.  He  had  played 
for  several  seasons  with  only  indifferent  success,  his 
value  as  an  actor  lying  rather  in  his  romantic  beauty 
of  person  than  in  any  talent  or  industry  he  possessed. 
He  was  a  fanatical  secessionist,  and  had  imbibed  at 
Richmond  and  other  Southern  cities  where  he  played 
a  furious  spirit  of  partizanship  against  Lincoln  and 
the  Union  party.  After  the  reelection  of  Mr.  Lincoln, 
he  visited  Canada,  consorted  with  the  rebel  emissaries 
there,  and — whether  or  not  at  their  instigation  cannot 
certainly  be  said — conceived  a  scheme  to  capture  the 
President  and  take  him  to  Richmond.  He  passed  a 
great  part  of  the  autumn  and  winter  pursuing  this  fan 
tastic  enterprise,  seeming  to  be  always  well  supplied 
with  money;  but  the  winter  wore  away,  and  nothing 
was  accomplished.  On  March  4  he  was  at  the  Capitol, 
and  created  a  disturbance  by  trying  to  force  his  way 
through  the  line  of  policemen  who  guarded  the  pas 
sage  through  which  the  President  walked  to  the  east 
front  of  the  building.  His  intentions  at  this  time  are 
not  known;  he  afterward  said  he  lost  an  excellent 
chance  of  killing  the  President  that  day. 

His  ascendancy  over  his  fellow-conspirators  seems 
to  have  been  complete.  After  the  surrender  of  Lee,  in 
an  access  of  malice  and  rage  akin  to  madness  he  called 
them  together  and  assigned  each  his  part  in  the  new 
crime  which  had  risen  in  his  mind  out  of  the  abandoned 
abduction  scheme.  This  plan  was  as  brief  and  simple 
as  it  was  horrible.  Powell,  alias  Payne,  the  stalwart, 
brutal,  simple-minded  boy  from  Florida,  was  to  murder 
Seward ;  Atzerodt,  the  comic  villain  of  the  drama,  was 
assigned  to  remove  Andrew  Johnson;  Booth  reserved 
for  himself  the  most  conspicuous  role  of  the  tragedy. 


536  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

It  was  Herold's  duty  to  attend  him  as  page  and  aid  him 
in  his  escape.  Minor  parts  were  given  to  stage-car 
penters  and  other  hangers-on,  who  probably  did  not 
understand  what  it  all  meant.  Herold,  Atzerodt,  and 
Surratt  had  previously  deposited  at  a  tavern  at  Sur- 
rattsville,  Maryland,  owned  by  Mrs.  Surratt,  but  kept 
by  a  man  named  Lloyd,  a  quantity  of  arms  and  materi 
als  to  be  used  in  the  abduction  scheme.  Mrs.  Surratt, 
being  at  the  tavern  on  the  eleventh,  warned  Lloyd  to 
have  the  "shooting-irons"  in  readiness,  and,  visiting 
the  place  again  on  the  fourteenth,  told  him  they  would 
probably  be  called  for  that  night. 

The  preparations  for  the  final  blow  were  made  with 
feverish  haste.  It  was  only  about  noon  of  the  four 
teenth  that  Booth  learned  that  the  President  was  to  go 
to  Ford's  Theater  that  night  to  see  the  play  "Our 
American  Cousin."  It  has  always  been  a  matter  of 
surprise  in  Europe  that  he  should  have  been  at  a  place 
of  amusement  on  Good  Friday;  but  the  day  was  not 
kept  sacred  in  America,  except  by  the  members  of  cer 
tain  churches.  The  President  was  fond  of  the  theater. 
It  was  one  of  his  few  means  of  recreation.  Besides,  the 
town  was  thronged  with  soldiers  and  officers,  all  eager 
to  see  him;  by  appearing  in  public  he  would  gratify 
many  people  whom  he  could  not  otherwise  meet.  Mrs. 
Lincoln  had  asked  General  and  Mrs.  Grant  to  accom 
pany  her;  they  had  accepted,  and  the  announcement 
that  they  would  be  present  had  been  made  in  the  even 
ing  papers;  but  they  changed  their  plans,  and  went 
north  by  an  afternoon  train.  Mrs.  Lincoln  then  in 
vited  in  their  stead  Miss  Harris  and  Major  Rathbone, 
the  daughter  and  the  stepson  of  Senator  Ira  Harris. 
Being  detained  by  visitors,  the  play  had  made  some 
progress  when  the  President  appeared.  The  band 
struck  up  "Hail  to  the  Chief,"  the  actors  ceased  play- 


FORD'S   THEATER  537 

ing,  the  audience  rose,  cheering  tumultuously,  the 
President  bowed  in  acknowledgment,  and  the  play 
went  on. 

From  the  moment  he  learned  of  the  President's  in 
tention,  Booth's  every  action  was  alert  and  energetic. 
He  and  his  confederates  were  seen  on  horseback  in 
every  part  of  the  city.  He  had  a  hurried  conference 
with  Mrs.  Surratt  before  she  started  for  Lloyd's  tavern. 
He  intrusted  to  an  actor  named  Matthews  a  carefully 
prepared  statement  of  his  reasons  for  committing  the 
murder,  which  he  charged  him  to  give  to  the  publisher 
of  the  "National  Intelligencer,"  but  which  Matthews, 
in  the  terror  and  dismay  of  the  night,  burned  without 
showing  to  any  one.  Booth  was  perfectly  at  home  in 
Ford's  Theater.  Either  by  himself,  or  with  the  aid  of 
friends,  he  arranged  his  whole  plan  of  attack  and 
escape  during  the  afternoon.  He  counted  upon  address 
and  audacity  to  gain  access  to  the  small  passage  behind 
the  President's  box.  Once  there,  he  guarded  against 
interference  by  an  arrangement  of  a  wooden  bar  to  be 
fastened  by  a  simple  mortise  in  the  angle  of  the  wall 
and  the  door  by  which  he  had  entered,  so  that  the  door 
could  not  be  opened  from  without.  He  even  provided 
for  the  contingency  of  not  gaining  entrance  to  the  box 
by  boring  a  hole  in  its  door,  through  which  he  might 
either  observe  the  occupants,  or  take  aim  and  shoot. 
He  hired  at  a  livery-stable  a  small,  fleet  horse. 

A  few  minutes  before  ten  o'clock,  leaving  his  horse 
at  the  rear  of  the  theater  in  charge  of  a  call-boy,  he 
went  into  a  neighboring  saloon,  took  a  drink  of  brandy, 
and,  entering  the  theater,  passed  rapidly  to  the  little 
hallway  leading  to  the  President's  box.  Showing  a 
card  to  the  servant  in  attendance,  he  was  allowed  to 
enter,  closed  the  door  noiselessly,  and  secured  it  with 
the  wooden  bar  he  had  previously  made  ready,  without 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

disturbing  any  of  the  occupants  of  the  box,  between 
whom  and  himself  yet  remained  the  partition  and  the 
door  through  which  he  had  made  the  hole. 

No  one,  not  even  the  comedian  who  uttered  them, 
could  ever  remember  the  last  words  of  the  piece  that 
were  spoken  that  night — the  last  Abraham  Lincoln 
heard  upon  earth.  The  tragedy  in  the  box  turned 
play  and  players  to  the  most  unsubstantial  of  phan 
toms.  Here  were  five  human  beings  in  a  narrow  space 
— the  greatest  man  of  his  time,  in  the  glory  of  the  most 
stupendous  success  of  our  history;  his  wife,  proud  and 
happy;  a  pair  of  betrothed  lovers,  with  all  the  prom 
ise  of  felicity  that  youth,  social  position,  and  wealth 
could  give  them;  and  this  handsome  young  actor,  the 
pet  of  his  little  world.  The  glitter  of  fame,  happiness, 
and  ease  was  upon  the  entire  group;  yet  in  an  instant 
everything  was  to  be  changed.  Quick  death  was  to 
come  to  the  central  figure — the  central  figure  of  the 
century's  great  and  famous  men.  Over  the  rest  hov 
ered  fates  from  which  a  mother  might  pray  kindly 
death  to  save  her  children  in  their  infancy.  One  was 
to  wander  with  the  stain  of  murder  upon  his  soul, 
in  frightful  physical  pain,  with  a  price  upon  his  head 
and  the  curse  of  a  world  upon  his  name,  until  he  died 
a  dog's  death  in  a  burning  barn ;  the  wife  was  to  pass 
the  rest  of  her  days  in  melancholy  and  madness ;  and 
one  of  the  lovers  was  to  slay  the  other,  and  end  his  life 
a  raving  maniac. 

The  murderer  seemed  to  himself  to  be  taking  part 
in  a  play.  Hate  and  brandy  had  for  weeks  kept  his 
brain  in  a  morbid  state.  Holding  a  pistol  in  one  hand 
and  a  knife  in  the  other,  he  opened  the  box  door,  put  the 
pistol  to  the  President's  head,  and  fired.  Major  Rath- 
bone  sprang  to  grapple  with  him,  and  received  a  savage 
knife  wound  in  the  arm.  Then,  rushing  forward, 


THE   PRESIDENT'S   DEATH  539 

Booth  placed  his  hand  on  the  railing  of  the  box  and 
vaulted  to  the  stage.  It  was  a  high  leap,  but  nothing 
to  such  an  athlete.  He  would  have  got  safely  away  but 
for  his  spur  catching  in  the  flag  that  draped  the  front 
of  the  box.  He  fell,  the  torn  flag  trailing  on  his  spur; 
but,  though  the  fall  had  broken  his  leg,  he  rose  in 
stantly,  and  brandishing  his  knife  and  shouting,  "Sic 
Semper  Tyrannis !"  fled  rapidly  across  the  stage  and 
out  of  sight.  Major  Rathbone  called,  "Stop  him!" 
The  cry  rang  out,  "He  has  shot  the  President!"  and 
from  the  audience,  stupid  at  first  with  surprise,  and 
wild  afterward  with  excitement  and  horror,  two  or 
three  men  jumped  upon  the  stage  in  pursuit  of  the 
assassin.  But  he  ran  through  the  familiar  passages, 
leaped  upon  his  horse,  rewarding  with  a  kick  and  a 
curse  the  boy  who  held  him,  and  escaped  into  the  night. 
The  President  scarcely  moved;  his  head  drooped 
forward  slightly,  his  eyes  closed.  Major  Rathbone, 
not  regarding  his  own  grievous  hurt,  rushed  to  the  door 
of  the  box  to  summon  aid.  He  found  it  barred,  and 
some  one  on  the  outside  beating  and  clamoring  for  ad 
mittance.  It  was  at  once  seen  that  the  President's 
wound  was  mortal.  A  large  derringer  bullet  had  en 
tered  the  back  of  the  head,  on  the  left  side,  and,  passing 
through  the  brain,  lodged  just  behind  the  left  eye.  He 
was  carried  to  a  house  across  the  street,  and  laid  upon 
a  bed  in  a  small  room  at  the  rear  of  the  hall  on  the 
ground  floor.  Mrs.  Lincoln  followed,  tenderly  cared 
for  by  Miss  Harris.  Rathbone,  exhausted  by  loss  of 
blood,  fainted,  and  was  taken  home.  Messengers  were 
sent  for  the  cabinet,  for  the  surgeon-general,  for  Dr. 
Stone,  Mr.  Lincoln's  family  physician,  and  for  others 
whose  official  or  private  relations  to  the  President 
gave  them  the  right  to  be  there.  A  crowd  of  people 
rushed  instinctively  to  the  White  House,  and,  burst- 


540  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

ing  through  the  doors,  shouted  the  dreadful  news 
to  Robert  Lincoln  and  Major  Hay,  who  sat  together 
in  an  upper  room.  They  ran  down-stairs,  and  as  they 
were  entering  a  carriage  to  drive  to  Tenth  Street,  a 
friend  came  up  and  told  them  that  Mr.  Seward  and 
most  of  the  cabinet  had  been  murdered.  The  news 
seemed  so  improbable  that  they  hoped  it  was  all  un 
true;  but,  on  reaching  Tenth  Street,  the  excitement 
and  the  gathering  crowds  prepared  them  for  the  worst. 
In  a  few  moments  those  who  had  been  sent  for  and 
many  others  were  assembled  in  the  little  chamber  where 
the  chief  of  the  state  lay  in  his  agony.  His  son  was 
met  at  the  door  by  Dr.  Stone,  who  with  grave  tender 
ness  informed  him  that  there  was  no  hope. 

The  President  had  been  shot  a  few  minutes  after  ten. 
The  wound  would  have  brought  instant  death  to  most 
men,  but  his  vital  tenacity  was  remarkable.  He  was, 
of  course,  unconscious  from  the  first  moment;  but  he 
breathed  with  slow  and  regular  respiration  throughout 
the  night.  As  the  dawn  came  and  the  lamplight  grew 
pale,  his  pulse  began  to  fail ;  but  his  face,  even  then,  was 
scarcely  more  haggard  than  those  of  the  sorrowing 
men  around  him.  His  automatic  moaning  ceased,  a 
look  of  unspeakable  peace  came  upon  his  worn  features, 
and  at  twenty-two  minutes  after  seven  he  died.  Stan- 
ton  broke  the  silence  by  saying : 

"Now  he  belongs  to  the  ages." 

Booth  had  done  his  work  efficiently.  His  principal 
subordinate,  Payne,  had  acted  with  equal  audacity  and 
cruelty,  but  not  with  equally  fatal  result.  Going  to  the 
home  of  the  Secretary  of  State,  who  lay  ill  in  bed,  he 
had  forced  his  way  to  Mr.  Seward's  room,  on  the  pre 
text  of  being  a  messenger  from  the  physician  with  a 
packet  of  medicine  to  deliver.  The  servant  at  the 
door  tried  to  prevent  him  from  going  up-stairs;  the 


ATTACK  ON   SEWARD  541 

Secretary's  son,  Frederick  W.  Seward,  hearing  the 
noise,  stepped  out  into  the  hall  to  check  the  intruders. 
Payne  rushed  upon  him  with  a  pistol  which  missed  fire, 
then  rained  blows  with  it  upon  his  head,  and,  grappling 
and  struggling,  the  two  came  to  the  Secretary's  room 
and  fell  together  through  the  door.  Frederick  Seward 
soon  became  unconscious,  and  remained  so  for  several 
weeks,  being,  perhaps,  the  last  man  in  the  civilized 
world  to  learn  the  strange  story  of  the  night.  The 
Secretary's  daughter  and  a  soldier  nurse  were  in  the 
room.  Payne  struck  them  right  and  left,  wounding 
the  nurse  with  his  knife,  and  then,  rushing  to  the  bed, 
began  striking  at  the  throat  of  the  crippled  statesman, 
inflicting  three  terrible  wounds  on  his  neck  and  cheek. 
The  nurse  recovered  himself  and  seized  the  assassin 
from  behind,  while  another  son,  roused  by  his  sister's 
screams,  came  into  the  room  and  managed  at  last  to 
force  him  outside  the  door — not,  however,  until  he  and 
the  nurse  had  been  stabbed  repeatedly.  Payne  broke 
away  at  last,  and  ran  down-stairs,  seriously  wounding 
an  attendant  on  the  way,  reached  the  door  unhurt, 
sprang  upon  his  horse,  and  rode  leisurely  away.  When 
surgical  aid  arrived,  the  Secretary's  house  looked  like 
a  field  hospital.  Five  of  its  inmates  were  bleeding  from 
ghastly  wounds,  and  two  of  them,  among  the  highest 
officials  of  the  nation,  it  was  thought  might  never  see 
the  light  of  another  day;  though  all  providentially 
recovered. 

The  assassin  left  behind  him  his  hat,  which  appar 
ently  trivial  loss  cost  him  and  one  of  his  fellow  con 
spirators  their  lives.  Fearing  that  the  lack  of  it  would 
arouse  suspicion,  he  abandoned  his  horse,  instead  of 
making  good  his  escape,  and  hid  himself  in  the  woods 
east  of  Washington  for  two  days.  Driven  at  last  by 
hunger,  he  returned  to  the  city  and  presented  himself  at 


542  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

Mrs.  Surratt's  house  at  the  very  moment  when  all  its 
inmates  had  been  arrested  and  were  about  to  be  taken 
to  the  office  of  the  provost-marshal.  Payne  thus  fell 
into  the  hands  of  justice,  and  the  utterance  of  half  a 
dozen  words  by  him  and  the  unhappy  woman  whose 
shelter  he  sought  proved  the  death-warrant  of  them 
both. 

Booth  had  been  recognized  by  dozens  of  people  as 
he  stood  before  the  footlights  and  brandished  his  dag 
ger  ;  but  his  swift  horse  quickly  carried  him  beyond  any 
haphazard  pursuit.  He  crossed  the  Navy- Yard  bridge 
and  rode  into  Maryland,  being  joined  very  soon  by 
Herold.  The  assassin  and  his  wretched  acolyte  came 
at  midnight  to  Mrs.  Surratt's  tavern,  and  afterward 
pushed  on  through  the  moonlight  to  the  house  of  an 
acquaintance  of  Booth,  a  surgeon  named  Mudd,  who 
set  Booth's  leg  and  gave  him  a  room,  where  he  rested 
until  evening,  when  Mudd  sent  them  on  their  desolate 
way  south.  After  parting  with  him  they  went  to  the 
residence  of  Samuel  Cox  near  Port  Tobacco,  and  were 
by  him  given  into  the  charge  of  Thomas  Jones,  a  con 
traband  trader  between  Maryland  and  Richmond,  a 
man  so  devoted  to  the  interests  of  the  Confederacy 
that  treason  and  murder  seemed  every-day  incidents 
to  be  accepted  as  natural  and  necessary.  He  kept 
Booth  and  Herold  in  hiding  at  the  peril  of  his  life  for 
a  week,  feeding  and  caring  for  them  in  the  woods  near 
his  house,  watching  for  an  opportunity  to  ferry  them 
across  the  Potomac ;  doing  this  while  every  wood-path 
was  haunted  by  government  detectives,  well  knowing 
that  death  would  promptly  follow  his  detection,  and 
that  a  reward  was  offered  for  the  capture  of  his  help 
less  charge  that  would  make  a  rich  man  of  any  one  who 
gave  him  up. 

With  such  devoted  aid  Booth  might  have  wandered 


FATE  OF  THE  ASSASSINS  543 

a  long  way ;  but  there  is  no  final  escape  but  suicide  for 
an  assassin  with  a  broken  leg.  At  each  painful  move 
the  chances  of  discovery  increased.  Jones  was  able, 
after  repeated  failures,  to  row  his  fated  guests  across 
the  Potomac.  Arriving  on  the  Virginia  side,  they 
lived  the  lives  of  hunted  animals  for  two  or  three  days 
longer,  finding  to  their  horror  that  they  were  received 
by  the  strongest  Confederates  with  more  of  annoyance 
than  enthusiasm,  though  none,  indeed,  offered  to  be 
tray  them.  Booth  had  by  this  time  seen  the  comments 
of  the  newspapers  on  his  work,  and  bitterer  than  death 
or  bodily  suffering  was  the  blow  to  his  vanity.  He  con 
fided  his  feelings  of  wrong  to  his  diary,  comparing 
himself  favorably  with  Brutus  and  Tell,  and  complain 
ing:  "I  am  abandoned,  with  the  curse  of  Cain  upon 
me,  when,  if  the  world  knew  my  heart,  that  one  blow 
would  have  made  me  great." 

On  the  night  of  April  25,  he  and  Herold  were  sur 
rounded  by  a  party  under  Lieutenant  E.  P.  Doherty, 
as  they  lay  sleeping  in  a  barn  belonging  to  one  Garrett, 
in  Caroline  County,  Virginia,  on  the  road  to  Bowling 
Green.  When  called  upon  to  surrender,  Booth  re 
fused.  A  parley  took  place,  after  which  Doherty  told 
him  he  would  fire  the  barn.  At  this  Herold  came  out 
and  surrendered.  The  barn  was  fired,  and  while  it  was 
burning,  Booth,  clearly  visible  through  the  cracks  in 
the  building,  was  shot  by  Boston  Corbett,  a  sergeant 
of  cavalry.  He  was  hit  in  the  back  of  the  neck,  not 
far  from  the  place  where  he  had  shot  the  President, 
lingered  about  three  hours  in  great  pain,  and  died  at 
seven  in  the  morning. 

The  surviving  conspirators,  with  the  exception  of 
John  H.  Surratt,  were  tried  by  military  commission 
sitting  in  Washington  in  the  months  of  May  and  June. 
The  charges  against  them  specified  that  they  were 


544  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

"incited  and  encouraged"  to  treason  and  murder  by 
Jefferson  Davis  and  the  Confederate  emissaries  in 
Canada.  This  was  not  proved  on  the  trial ;  though  the 
evidence  bearing  on  the  case  showed  frequent  commu 
nications  between  Canada  and  Richmond  and  the 
Booth  coterie  in  Washington,  and  some  transactions 
in  drafts  at  the  Montreal  Bank,  where  Jacob  Thomp 
son  and  Booth  both  kept  accounts.  Mrs.  Surratt, 
Payne,  Herold,  and  Atzerodt  were  hanged  on  July  7; 
Mudd,  Arnold,  and  O'Laughlin  were  imprisoned  for 
life  at  the  Tortugas,  the  term  being  afterward  short 
ened;  and  Spangler,  the  scene-shifter  at  the  theater,  was 
sentenced  to  six  years  in  jail.  John  H.  Surratt  escaped 
to  Canada,  and  from  there  to  England.  He  wandered 
over  Europe,  and  finally  was  detected  in  Egypt  and 
brought  back  to  Washington  in  1867,  where  his  trial 
lasted  two  months,  and  ended  in  a  disagreement  of 
the  jury. 

Upon  the  hearts  of  a  people  glowing  with  the  joy 
of  victory,  the  news  of  the  President's  assassination 
fell  as  a  great  shock.  It  was  the  first  time  the  tele 
graph  had  been  called  upon  to  spread  over  the  world 
tidings  of  such  deep  and  mournful  significance.  In  the 
stunning  effect  of  the  unspeakable  calamity  the  coun 
try  lost  sight  of  the  national  success  of  the  past  week, 
and  it  thus  came  to  pass  that  there  was  never  any  or 
ganized  expression  of  the  general  exultation  or  rejoic 
ing  in  the  North  over  the  downfall  of  the  rebellion.  It 
was  unquestionably  best  that  it  should  be  so;  and  Lin 
coln  himself  would  not  have  had  it  otherwise.  He 
hated  the  arrogance  of  triumph;  and  even  in  his  cruel 
death  he  would  have  been  glad  to  know  that  his  passage 
to  eternity  would  prevent  too  loud  an  exultation  over 
the  vanquished.  As  it  was,  the  South  could  take  no 
umbrage  at  a  grief  so  genuine  and  so  legitimate;  the 


PUBLIC  GRIEF  $4$ 

people  of  that  section  even  shared,  to  a  certain  degree, 
in  the  lamentations  over  the  bier  of  one  whom  in  their 
inmost  hearts  they  knew  to  have  wished  them  well. 

There  was  one  exception  to  the  general  grief  too 
remarkable  to  be  passed  over  in  silence.  Among  the 
extreme  radicals  in  Congress,  Mr.  Lincoln's  determined 
clemency  and  liberality  toward  the  Southern  people 
had  made  an  impression  so  unfavorable  that,  though 
they  were  naturally  shocked  at  his  murder,  they  did 
not,  among  themselves,  conceal  their  gratification  that 
he  was  no  longer  in  the  way.  In  a  political  caucus,  held 
a  few  hours  after  the  President's  death,  "the  feeling 
was  nearly  universal,"  to  quote  the  language  of  one 
of  their  most  prominent  representatives,  "that  the  ac 
cession  of  Johnson  to  the  presidency  would  prove  a 
godsend  to  the  country." 

In  Washington,  with  this  singular  exception,  the 
manifestation  of  public  grief  was  immediate  and  de 
monstrative.  Within  an  hour  after  the  body  was  taken 
to  the  White  House,  the  town  was  shrouded  in  black. 
Not  only  the  public  buildings,  the  shops,  and  the  better 
residences  were  draped  in  funeral  decorations,  but  still 
more  touching  proof  of  affection  was  seen  in  the  poor 
est  class  of  houses,  where  laboring  men  of  both  colors 
found  means  in  their  penury  to  afford  some  scanty 
show  of  mourning.  The  interest  and  veneration  of 
the  people  still  centered  in  the  White  House,  where, 
under  a  tall  catafalque  in  the  East  Room,  the  late  chief 
lay  in  the  majesty  of  death,  and  not  at  the  modest 
tavern  on  Pennsylvania  Avenue,  where  the  new  Presi 
dent  had  his  lodging,  and  where  Chief- Justice  Chase 
administered  the  oath  of  office  to  him  at  eleven  o'clock 
on  the  morning  of  April  15. 

It  was  determined  that  the  funeral  ceremonies  in 
Washington  should  be  celebrated  on  Wednesday,  April 

35 


546  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

19,  and  all  the  churches  throughout  the  country  were 
invited  to  join  at  the  same  time  in  appropriate  obser 
vances.  The  ceremonies  in  the  East  Room  were  brief 
and  simple — the  burial  service,  a  prayer,  and  a  short 
address;  while  all  the  pomp  and  circumstance  which 
the  government  could  command  was  employed  to  give 
a  fitting  escort  from  the  White  House  to  the  Capitol, 
where  the  body  of  the  President  was  to  lie  in  state. 
The  vast  procession  moved  amid  the  booming  of  min 
ute-guns,  and  the  tolling  of  all  the  bells  in  Washing 
ton,  Georgetown,  and  Alexandria ;  and  to  associate  the 
pomp  of  the  day  with  the  greatest  work  of  Lincoln's 
life,  a  detachment  of  colored  troops  marched  at  the 
head  of  the  line. 

As  soon  as  it  was  announced  that  Mr.  Lincoln  was  to 
be  buried  at  Springfield,  Illinois,  every  town  and  city 
on  the  route  begged  that  the  train  might  halt  within 
its  limits  and  give  its  people  the  opportunity  of  testify 
ing  their  grief  and  reverence.  It  was  finally  arranged 
that  the  funeral  cortege  should  follow  substantially 
the  same  route  over  which  he  had  come  in  1861  to  take 
possession  of  the  office  to  which  he  had  given  a  new 
dignity  and  value  for  all  time.  On  April  21,  accom 
panied  by  a  guard  of  honor,  and  in  a  train  decked  with 
somber  trappings,  the  journey  was  begun.  At  Balti 
more,  through  which,  four  years  before,  it  was  a 
question  whether  the  President-elect  could  pass  with 
safety  to  his  life,  the  coffin  was  taken  with  reverent 
care  to  the  great  dome  of  the  Exchange,  where,  sur 
rounded  with  evergreens  and  lilies,  it  lay  for  several 
hours,  the  people  passing  by  in  mournful  throngs. 
The  same  demonstration  was  repeated,  gaining  con 
tinually  in  intensity  of  feeling  and  solemn  splendor  of 
display,  in  every  city  through  which  the  procession 
passed.  The  reception  in  New  York  was  worthy  alike 


THE  MOURNING  PAGEANT  547 

of  the  great  city  and  of  the  memory  of  the  man  they 
honored.  The  body  lay  in  state  in  the  City  Hall,  and 
a  half-million  people  passed  in  deep  silence  before  it. 
Here  General  Scott  came,  pale  and  feeble,  but  resolute, 
to  pay  his  tribute  of  respect  to  his  departed  friend  and 
commander. 

The  train  went  up  the  Hudson  River  by  night,  and  at 
every  town  and  village  on  the  way  vast  waiting  crowds 
were  revealed  by  the  fitful  glare  of  torches,  and  dirges 
and  hymns  were  sung.  As  the  train  passed  into  Ohio, 
the  crowds  increased  in  density,  and  the  public  grief 
seemed  intensified  at  every  step  westward.  The  people 
of  the  great  central  basin  were  claiming  their  own. 
The  day  spent  at  Cleveland  was  unexampled  in  the 
depth  of  emotion  it  brought  to  life.  Some  of  the  guard 
of  honor  have  said  that  it  was  at  this  point  they  began 
to  appreciate  the  place  which  Lincoln  was  to  hold  in 
history. 

The  last  stage  of  this  extraordinary  progress  was 
completed,  and  Springfield  reached  at  nine  o'clock  on 
the  morning  of  May  3.  Nothing  had  been  done  or 
thought  of  for  two  weeks  in  Springfield  but  the  prep 
arations  for  this  day,  and  they  had  been  made  with  a 
thoroughness  which  surprised  the  visitors  from  the 
East.  The  body  lay  in  state  in  the  Capitol,  which  was 
richly  draped  from  roof  to  basement  in  black  velvet 
and  silver  fringe.  Within  it  was  a  bower  of  bloom  and 
fragrance.  For  twenty-four  hours  an  unbroken  stream 
of  people  passed  through,  bidding  their  friend  and 
neighbor  welcome  home  and  farewell ;  and  at  ten 
o'clock  on  May  4,  the  coffin  lid  was  closed,  and  a  vast 
procession  moved  out  to  Oak  Ridge,  where  the  town 
had  set  apart  a  lovely  spot  for  his  grave,  and  where 
the  dead  President  was  committed  to  the  soil  of  the 
State  which  had  so  loved  and  honored  him.  The  cere- 


548  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

monies  at  the  grave  were  simple  and  touching.  Bishop 
Simpson  delivered  a  pathetic  oration;  prayers  were 
offered  and  hymns  were  sung;  but  the  weightiest  and 
most  eloquent  words  uttered  anywhere  that  day  were 
those  of  the  second  inaugural,  which  the  committee 
had  wisely  ordained  to  be  read  over  his  grave,  as  the 
friends  of  Raphael  chose  the  incomparable  canvas  of 
the  Transfiguration  to  be  the  chief  ornament  of  his 
funeral. 


XXXVIII 

Lincoln's  Early  Environment — Its  Effect  on  his  Charac 
ter — His  Attitude  toivard  Slavery  and  the  Slaveholder 
— His  Schooling  in  Disappointment — His  Seeming 
Failures — His  Real  Successes — The  Final  Trial — His 
Achievements — His  Place  in  History 

A  CHILD  born  to  an  inheritance  of  want;  a  boy 
growing  into  a  narrow  world  of  ignorance;  a 
youth  taking  up  the  burden  of  coarse  manual  labor; 
a  man  entering  on  the  doubtful  struggle  of  a  local 
back\voods  career — these  were  the  beginnings  of  Abra 
ham  Lincoln,  if  we  analyze  them  under  the  hard  prac 
tical  cynical  philosophy  which  takes  for  its  motto  that 
"nothing  succeeds  but  success."  If,  however,  we  adopt 
a  broader  philosophy,  and  apply  the  more  generous 
and  more  universal  principle  that  "everything  succeeds 
which  attacks  favorable  opportunity  with  fitting  endea 
vor,"  then  we  see  that  it  was  the  strong  vitality,  the 
active  intelligence,  and  the  indefinable  psychological 
law  of  moral  growth  that  assimilates  the  good  and  re 
jects  the  bad,  which  Nature  gave  this  obscure  child, 
that  carried  him  to  the  service  of  mankind  and  to 
the  admiration  of  the  centuries  with  the  same  certainty 
with  which  the  acorn  grows  to  be  the  oak. 

We  see  how  even  the  limitations  of  his  environment 
helped  the  end.  Self-reliance,  that  most  vital  charac 
teristic  of  the  pioneer,  was  his  by  blood  and  birth  and 
training;  and  developed  through  the  privations  of  his 
lot  and  the  genius  that  was  in  him  to  the  mighty 

549 


550  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

strength  needed  to  guide  our  great  country  through  the 
titanic  struggle  of  the  Civil  War. 

The  sense  of  equality  was  his,  also  by  virtue  of  his 
pioneer  training — a  consciousness  fostered  by  life  from 
childhood  to  manhood  in  a  state  of  society  where 
there  were  neither  rich  to  envy  nor  poor  to  despise, 
where  the  gifts  and  hardships  of  the  forest  were  distrib 
uted  impartially  to  each,  and  where  men  stood  indeed 
equal  before  the  forces  of  unsubdued  nature. 

The  same  great  forces  taught  liberality,  modesty, 
charity,  sympathy — in  a  word,  neighborliness.  In  that 
hard  life,  far  removed  from  the  artificial  aids  and  com 
forts  of  civilization,  where  all  the  wealth  of  Croesus, 
had  a  man  possessed  it,  would  not  have  sufficed  to  pur 
chase  relief  from  danger,  or  help  in  time  of  need,  neigh 
borliness  became  of  prime  importance.  A  good  neigh 
bor  doubled  his  safety  and  his  resources,  a  group  of 
good  neighbors  increased  his  comfort  and  his  pros 
pects  in  a  ratio  that  grew  like  the  cube  root.  Here  was 
opportunity  to  practise  that  virtue  that  Christ  declared 
to  be  next  to  the  love  of  God — the  fruitful  injunction 
to  "love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself." 

Here,  too,  in  communities  far  from  the  customary 
restraints  of  organized  law,  the  common  native  intel 
ligence  of  the  pioneer  was  brought  face  to  face  with 
primary  and  practical  questions  of  natural  right. 
These  men  not  only  understood  but  appreciated  the 
American  doctrine  of  self-government.  It  was  this 
understanding,  this  feeling,  which  taught  Lincoln  to 
write:  "When  the  white  man  governs  himself,  that  is 
self-government;  but  when  he  governs  himself  and  also 
governs  another  man,  that  is  more  than  self-govern 
ment — that  is  despotism";  and  its  philosophic  corol 
lary:  "He  who  would  be  no  slave  must  consent  to 
have  no  slave." 


EARLY  ENVIRONMENT  551 

Abraham  Lincoln  sprang  from  exceptional  condi 
tions — was  in  truth,  in  the  language  of  Lowell,  a 
''new  birth  of  our  new  soil."  But  this  distinction  was 
not  due  alone  to  mere  environment.  The  ordinary 
man,  with  ordinary  natural  gifts,  found  in  Western 
pioneer  communities  a  development  essentially  the  same 
as  he  would  have  found  under  colonial  Virginia  or 
Puritan  New  England :  a  commonplace  life,  varying 
only  with  the  changing  ideas  and  customs  of  time  and 
locality.  But  for  the  man  with  extraordinary  powers 
of  body  and  mind ;  for  the  individual  gifted  by  nature 
with  the  genius  which  Abraham  Lincoln  possessed; 
the  pioneer  condition,  with  its  severe  training  in  self- 
denial,  patience,  and  industry,  was  favorable  to  a  de 
velopment  of  character  that  helped  in  a  preeminent 
degree  to  qualify  him  for  the  duties  and  responsibilities 
of  leadership  and  government.  He  escaped  the  formal 
conventionalities  which  beget  insincerity  and  dissim 
ulation.  He  grew  up  without  being  warped  by  erro 
neous  ideas  or  false  principles ;  without  being  dwarfed 
by  vanity,  or  tempted  by  self-interest. 

Some  pioneer  communities  carried  with  them  the 
institution  of  slavery;  and  in  the  slave  State  of  Ken 
tucky  Lincoln  was  born.  He  remained  there  only  a 
short  time,  and  we  have  every  reason  to  suppose  that 
\vherever  he  might  have  grown  to  maturity  his  very 
mental  and  moral  fiber  would  have  spurned  the  doctrine 
and  practice  of  human  slavery.  And  yet  so  subtle  is 
the  influence  of  birth  and  custom,  that  we  can  trace  one 
lasting  effect  of  this  early  and  brief  environment. 
Though  he  ever  hated  slavery,  he  never  hated  the  slave 
holder.  This  ineradicable  feeling  of  pardon  and  sym 
pathy  for  Kentucky  and  the  South  played  no  insig 
nificant  part  in  his  dealings  with  grave  problems  of 
statesmanship.  He  struck  slavery  its  death-blow  with 


552  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

the  hand  of  war,  but  he  tendered  the  slaveholder  a 
golden  equivalent  with  the  hand  of  friendship  and 
peace. 

His  advancement  in  the  astonishing  career  which 
carried  him  from  obscurity  to  world-wide  fame;  from 
postmaster  of  New  Salem  village  to  President  of  the 
United  States;  from  captain  of  a  backwoods  volunteer 
company  to  commander-in-chief  of  the  army  and  navy, 
was  neither  sudden,  nor  accidental,  nor  easy.  He  was 
both  ambitious  and  successful,  but  his  ambition  was 
moderate  and  his  success  was  slow.  And  because  his 
success  was  slow,  his  ambition  never  outgrew  either 
his  judgment  or  his  powers.  From  the  day  when  he 
left  the  paternal  roof  and  launched  his  canoe  on  the 
head  waters  of  the  Sangamon  River  to  begin  life  on 
his  own  account,  to  the  day  of  his  first  inauguration, 
there  intervened  full  thirty  years  of  toil,  of  study,  self- 
denial,  patience;  often  of  effort  bafHed,  of  hope  de 
ferred  ;  sometimes  of  bitter  disappointment.  Given  the 
natural  gift  of  great  genius,  given  the  condition  of 
favorable  environment,  it  yet  required  an  average  life 
time  and  faithful  unrelaxing  effort  to  transform  the 
raw  country  stripling  into  a  competent  ruler  for  this 
great  nation. 

Almost  every  success  was  balanced — sometimes  over 
balanced  by  a  seeming  failure.  Reversing  the  usual 
promotion,  he  went  into  the  Black  Hawk  War  a  cap 
tain,  and,  through  no  fault  of  his  own,  came  out  a  pri 
vate.  He  rode  to  the  hostile  frontier  on  horseback,  and 
trudged  home  on  foot.  His  store  "winked  out."  His 
surveyor's  compass  and  chain,  with  which  he  was  earn 
ing  a  scanty  living,  were  sold  for  debt.  He  was  de 
feated  in  his  first  campaign  for  the  legislature ;  defeated 
in  his  first  attempt  to  be  nominated  for  Congress;  de 
feated  in  his  application  to  be  appointed  commissioner 


HIS   REAL   SUCCESSES  553 

of  the  General  Land  Office ;  defeated  for  the  Senate  in 
the  Illinois  legislature  of  1854,  when  he  had  forty- 
five  votes  to  begin  with,  by  Trumbull,  who  had  only 
five  votes  to  begin  with ;  defeated  in  the  legislature  of 
1858,  by  an  antiquated  apportionment,  when  his  joint 
debates  with  Douglas  had  won  him  a  popular  plural 
ity  of  nearly  four  thousand  in  a  Democratic  State; 
defeated  in  the  nomination  for  Vice-President  on  the 
Fremont  ticket  in  1856,  when  a  favorable  nod  from 
half  a  dozen  wire- workers  would  have  brought  him 
success. 

Failures?  Not  so.  Every  seeming  defeat  was  a 
slow  success.  His  was  the  growth  of  the  oak,  and  not 
of  Jonah's  gourd.  Every  scaffolding  of  temporary 
elevation  he  pulled  down,  every  ladder  of  transient  ex 
pectation  which  broke  under  his  feet  accumulated  his 
strength,  and  piled  up  a  solid  mound  which  raised  him 
to  wider  usefulness  and  clearer  vision.  He  could  not 
become  a  master  workman  until  he  had  served  a  tedious 
apprenticeship.  It  was  the  quarter  of  a  century  of  read 
ing,  thinking,  speech-making  and  legislating  which 
qualified  him  for  selection  as  the  chosen  champion  of 
the  Illinois  Republicans  in  the  great  Lincoln-Douglas 
joint  debates  of  1858.  It  was  the  great  intellectual  vic 
tory  won  in  these  debates,  plus  the  title  "Honest  old 
Abe,"  won  by  truth  and  manhood  among  his  neighbors 
during  a  whole  generation,  that  led  the  people  of  the 
United  States  to  confide  to  his  hands  the  duties  and 
powers  of  President. 

And  when,  after  thirty  years  of  endeavor,  success 
had  beaten  down  defeat ;  when  Lincoln  had  been  nom 
inated,  elected,  and  inaugurated,  came  the  crowning 
trial  of  his  faith  and  constancy.  When  the  people,  by 
free  and  lawful  choice,  had  placed  honor  and  power  in 
his  hands ;  when  his  signature  could  convene  Congress, 


554  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

approve  laws,  make  ministers,  cause  ships  to  sail  and 
armies  to  move;  when  he  could  speak  with  potential 
voice  to  other  rulers  of  other  lands,  there  suddenly 
came  upon  the  government  and  the  nation  the  symp 
toms  of  a  fatal  paralysis ;  honor  seemed  to  dwindle  and 
power  to  vanish.  Was  he  then,  after  all,  not  to  be 
President?  Was  patriotism  dead?  Was  the  Consti 
tution  waste  paper?  Was  the  Union  gone? 

The  indications  were,  indeed,  ominous.  Seven  States 
were  in  rebellion.  There  \vas  treason  in  Congress, 
treason  in.  the  Supreme  Court,  treason  in  the  army  and 
navy.  Confusion  and  discord  rent  public  opinion.  To 
use  Lincoln's  own  forcible  simile,  sinners  were  calling 
the  righteous  to  repentance.  Finally,  the  flag,  insulted 
on  the  Star  of  the  West,  trailed  in  capitulation  at  Sum- 
ter;  and  then  came  the  humiliation  of  the  Baltimore 
riot,  and  the  President  practically  for  a  few  days  a 
prisoner  in  the  capital  of  the  nation. 

But  his  apprenticeship  had  been  served,  and  there 
was  no  more  failure.  With  faith  and  justice  and  gen 
erosity  he  conducted  for  four  long  years  a  civil  war 
whose  frontiers  stretched  from  the  Potomac  to  the 
Rio  Grande;  whose  soldiers  numbered  a  million  men 
on  each  side ;  in  which,  counting  skirmishes  and  battles 
small  and  great,  was  fought  an  average  of  two  en 
gagements  every  day ;  and  during  which  every  twenty- 
four  hours  saw  an  expenditure  of  two  millions  of 
money.  The  labor,  the  thought,  the  responsibility,  the 
strain  of  intellect  and  anguish  of  soul  that  he  gave  to 
this  great  task,  who  can  measure? 

The  sincerity  of  the  fathers  of  the  Republic  was  im 
pugned;  he  justified  them.  The  Declaration  of  Inde 
pendence  was  called  a  "string  of  glittering  generali 
ties"  and  a  "self-evident  lie" ;  he  refuted  the  aspersion. 
The  Constitution  was  perverted ;  he  corrected  the  error. 
The  flag  was  insulted;  he  redressed  the  offense.  The 


HIS   PLACE   IN   HISTORY  555 

government  was  assailed ;  he  restored  its  authority. 
Slavery  thrust  the  sword  of  civil  war  at  the  heart  of  the 
nation;  he  crushed  slavery,  and  cemented  the  purified 
Union  in  new  and  stronger  bonds. 

And  all  the  while  conciliation  was  as  active  as  vin 
dication  was  stern.  He  reasoned  and  pleaded  with 
the  anger  of  the  South;  he  gave  insurrection  time  to 
repent;  he  forbore  to  execute  retaliation;  he  offered 
recompense  to  slaveholders;  he  pardoned  treason. 

What  but  lifetime  schooling  in  disappointment; 
what  but  the  pioneer's  self-reliance  and  freedom  from 
prejudice;  what  but  the  patient  faith,  the  clear  percep 
tions  of  natural  right,  the  unwarped  sympathy  and  un- 
bounding  charity  of  this  man  with  spirit  so  humble 
and  soul  so  great,  could  have  carried  him  through  the 
labors  he  wrought  to  the  victory  he  attained  ? 

As  the  territory  may  be  said  to  be  its  body,  and  its 
material  activities  its  blood,  so  patriotism  may  be  said 
to  be  the  vital  breath  of  a  nation.  When  patriotism 
dies,  the  nation  dies,  and  its  resources  as  well  as  its 
territory  go  to  other  peoples  with  stronger  vitality. 

Patriotism  can  in  no  way  be  more  effectively  cul 
tivated  than  by  studying  and  commemorating  the 
achievements  and  virtues  of  our  great  men — the  men 
who  have  lived  and  died  for  the  nation,  who  have  ad 
vanced  its  prosperity,  increased  its  power,  added  to  its 
glory.  In  our  brief  history  the  United  States  can 
boast  of  many  great  men,  and  the  achievement  by  its 
sons  of  many  great  deeds;  and  if  we  accord  the  first 
rank  to  Washington  as  founder,  so  we  must  unhesitat 
ingly  give  to  Lincoln  the  second  place  as  preserver 
and  regenerator  of  American  liberty.  So  far,  how 
ever,  from  being  opposed  or  subordinated  either  to  the 
other,  the  popular  heart  has  already  canonized  these 
two  as  twin  heroes  in  our  national  pantheon,  as  twin 
stars  in  the  firmament  of  our  national  fame. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Able,   Mrs.,  sister   of  Mary   Owens,   55, 

60 
Adams,  Charles   Francis,   member    of 

Congress,  United  States  minister  to  Eng 

land,  sent  to  England,  211 
Alabama,  State  of,  admitted  as  State,  1819, 

19 
Alabama,  the,  Confederate  cruiser,  sunk  by 

the  Kcnrsarge,  525 
Albemarle,    the,    Confederate     ironclad, 

destruction  of,  October  27,  1864,  525 
Albert,   Prince    Consort,   drafts    note    to 

Lord  Russell  about  Trent  affair,  247 
Alexander    II,  Czar    ot    Russia,  emanci 

pates  Russian  serfs,  101 
Alexandria,  Virginia,  occupation  of,  214 
American  Party,  principles  of,  101,  102  ; 

nominates    Millard    Fillmore    for    Presi 

dent,  1856,   IO2 

Anderson,  Robert,  brevet  major-general 
United  States  army,  transfers  his  com 
mand  to  Fort  Sumter,  177,  178;  reports 
condition  of  Fort  Sumter,  182  ;  notified 
of  coming  relief,  188  ;  defense  and  sur 
render  of  Fort  Sumter,  189,  190;  telegram 
about  Fremont's  proclamation,  240;  sends 
Sherman  to  Nashville,  254  ;  turns  over 
command  to  Sherman,  254  ;  raises  flag 
over  Fort  Sumter,  531 

Antietam,  Maryland,  battle  of,  September 
17,  1862,  315 

Arkansas,  State  of,  joins  Confederacy,  200, 
204;  military  governor  appointed  for, 
419;  reconstruction  in,  426,  427;  slavery 
abolished  in,  427  ;  slavery  in,  throttled  by 
public  opinion,  473;  ratifies  Thirteenth 
Amendment,  475 

Armies  of  the  United  States,  enlistment 
in,  since  beginning  of  the  war,  353,  354; 
numbers  under  Grant's  command,  March, 
1865,  507;  reduction  of,  to  peace  footing, 
527;  grand  review  of,  527-529 

Armstrong,  Jack,  wrestles  with  Lincoln, 
25 

Arnold,  Samuel,  in  conspiracy  to  assas 
sinate  Lincoln.  534;  imprisoned,  544 

Atlanta,  Georgia,  siege  of,  July  22  to  Sep 
tember  i,  1864.  407 

Atzerodt,  George,  in  conspiracy  to  assas 
sinate  Lincoln,  534  ;  assigned  to  murder 
Andrew  Johnson,  535  ;  deposits  arms  in 
tavern  at  Surrattsville,  536;  execution  of, 


Bailey,  Theodorus,  rear-admiral  United 
States  navy,  in  expedition  against  New 
Orleans,  284 


Bailhache,  William  H.,  prints  Lincoln's 
first  inaugural,  168 

Baker,  Edward  D.,  member  of  Congress, 
United  States  senator,  brevet  major-gen 
eral  United  States  Volunteers,  at  Spring 
field,  Illinois,  52;  nominated  for  Congress, 
73;  in  Mexican  War,  75 

Ball's  Bluff,  Virginia,  battle  of,  October, 
21,  1861,  262 

Baltimore,  Maryland,  Massachusetts  Sixth 
mobbed  in,  103;  occupied  by  General 
Butler,  199 ;  threatened  by  Early,  403 ; 
funeral  honors  to  Lincoln  in,  546 

Bancroft,  George,  Secretary  of  the  Navy, 
historian,  minister  to  Prussia,  letter  to 
Lincoln,  321 

Banks,  Nathaniel  P.,  Speaker  of  the 
House  of  Representatives,  major-general 
United  States  Volunteers,  in  Army  of 
Virginia,  310;  forces  under,  for  defense  of 
Washington,  317;  operations  against  Port 
Hudson,  382;  captures  Port  Hudson, 
383,  384;  reply  to  Lincoln,  425;  causes 
election  of  State  officers  in  Louisiana, 
425,  426 ;  opinion  of  new  Louisiana  con 
stitution,  426 

Barton,  William,  governor  of  Delaware, 
reply  to  Lincoln's  call  for  volunteers, 
193 

Bates,  Edward,  member  of  Congress, 
Attorney-General,  candidate  for  presiden 
tial  nomination,  1860,  144;  vote  for,  in 
Chicago  convention,  149;  tendered  cab 
inet  appointment,  163 ;  appointed  Attor 
ney-General,  182;  signs  cabinet  protest, 
311;  rewrites  cabinet  protest,  312;  re 
signs  from  cabinet,  491 

Beauregard,  G.  T.,  Confederate  general, 
reduces  Fort  Sumter,  188-190;  in  com 
mand  at  Manassas  Junction,  215;  under 
standing  with  Johnston,  216;  battle  of 
Bull  Run,  July  21,  1861,  226-229;  coun 
cil  with  Johnston  and  Hardee,  267 ;  suc 
ceeds  to  command  at  Pittsburg  Landing, 
273;  losses  at  Pittsburg  Landing,  274; 
evacuates  Corinth,  275 ;  united  with 
Hood,  409  ;  orders  Hood  to  assume  offen 
sive,  410;  interview  with  Davis  and 
Johnston,  520 

Bell,  John,  member  of  Congress,  Secretary 
of  War,  United  States  senator,  nominated 
for  President,  1860,  143;  vote  for,  160 

Benjamin,  Judah  P.,  United  States  sen 
ator,  Confederate  Secretary  of  State,  sug 
gestions  about  instructions  to  peace 
commissioners,  482;  last  instructions  to 
Slidell,  501,  502 


559 


560 


INDEX 


Berry,  "William  F.,  partner  of  Lincoln 
in  a  store,  ^5 ;  death  of,  36 

Big  Bethel,  Virginia,  disaster  at,  214 

Blackburn's  Ford,  Virginia,  engagement 
at,  July  18,  1861,  226 

Black  Hawk,  chief  of  the  Sac  Indians, 
crosses  Mississippi  into  Illinois,  32 

Black,  Jeremiah  S.,  Attorney-General, 
Secretary  of  State,  war  of  pamphlets  with 
Douglas,  134 

Blair,  Francis  P.,  Sr.,  quarrel  with  Fre 
mont,  236,  487;  asks  permission  to  go 
South,  478;  interviews  with  Jefferson 
Davis,  479-482 ;  his  Mexican  project,  479 

Blair,  Francis  P.,  Jr.,  member  of  Con 
gress,  major-general  United  States  Vol 
unteers,  quarrel  with  Fremont,  236,  487, 
488 

Blair,  Montgomery,  Postmaster-General, 
appointed  Postmaster-General,  182;  quar 
rel  with  Fremont,  236,  487, 488  ;  at  cabinet 
meeting,  July  22,  1862,  331,  332 ;  objects  to 
timefor  issuing  emancipationproclamation, 
340;  resolution  in  Republican  platform 
aimed  at,  446,  487;  relations  with  members 
of  the  cabinet,  488 ;  remarks  after  Early's 
raid,  488 ;  retires  from  cabinet,  489 ; 
works  for  Lincoln's  reelection,  489,  490; 
wishes  to  be  chief  justice,  490;  declines 
foreign  mission,  490 

Bogue,  Captain  Vincent,  navigates 
Sangamon  River  in  steamer  Talisman, 
27,  28 

Boonville,  Missouri,  battle  of,  June  17, 
1861,  214 

Booth,  John  Wilkes,  personal  descrip 
tion  of,  534,  535 ;  scheme  to  abduct  Lin 
coln,  535 ;  creates  disturbance  at  Lincoln's 
second  inauguration,  535 ;  assigns  parts 
in  conspiracy  to  assassinate  Lincoln,  535, 
536;  final  preparations,  536,  537;  shoots 
the  President,  538  ;  wounds  Major  Rath- 
bone,  538 ;  escape  of,  530 ;  flight  and 
capture  of,  542,  543;  death  of,  543;  ac 
count  at  Montreal  Bank,  544 

Bragg,  Braxton,  Confederate  general, 
forces  Buell  back  to  Louisville,  275,  276 ; 
threatens  Louisville,  379 ;  battle  of  Perry  - 
ville,  379 ;  battle  of  Murfreesboro,  380 ; 
retreat  to  Chattanooga,  385  ;  Chattanooga 
and  Chickamauga,  386-392 ;  retreats  to 
Dalton,  392;  superseded  by  Johnston, 
395  ;  his  invasion  delays  reconstruction  in 
Tennessee,  428 

Breckinridge,  John  C.,  Vice-President, 
Confedetate  major-general,  and  Secretary 
of  War,  nominated  for  Vice-President, 
1856,  104 ;  desires  Douglas's  reelection 
to  United  States  Senate,  126;  nominated 
for  President.  1860,  143;  vote  for,  160; 
joins  the  rebellion,  217 ;  required  by  Davis 
to  report  on  Johnston-Sherman  agree 
ment,  523 

Breckinridge,  Robert  J.,  D.D.,  LL.D., 
temporary  chairman  Republican  national 
convention,  1864.  446 

Brown,  Albert  G.,  member  of  Congress, 
United  States  senator,  questions  Douglas, 


129;  demands  congressional  slave  code, 
141 

Brown,  John,  raid  at  Harper's  Ferry, 
trial  and  execution  of,  134 

Brown,  Joseph  E.,  governor  of  Georgia, 
United  States  senator,  refuses  to  obey 
orders  from  Richmond,  481 

Browning,  Orville  H.,  United  States 
senator,  Secretary  of  the  Interior  under 
President  Johnson,  at  Springfield,  Illinois, 
52;  speech  in  Chicago  convention,  151 

Browning,  Mrs.  O.  H.,  Lincoln's  letter 
to,  58,  59 

Bryant,  William  Cullen,  presides  over 
Cooper  Institute  meeting,  138 

Buchanan,  Franklin,  captain  United 
States  navy,  admiral  Confederate  navy, 
resigns  from  Washington  navy-yard  and 
joins  the  Confederacy,  196 

Buchanan,  James,  fifteenth  President  of 
the  United  States,  nominated  for  Presi 
dent,  1856,  104  ;  elected  President,  105, 
108;  announces  pro-slavery  policy,  114; 
appoints  Walker  governor  of  Kansas, 
114;  reply  to  Walker's  letter,  115;  spe 
cial  message  recommending  Lecompton 
Constitution,  115;  permits  Scott  to  be 
called  to  Washington,  172;  non-action 
regarding  secession,  176,  177;  reconstruc 
tion  of  his  cabinet,  178;  rides  with  Lin 
coln  in  inauguration  procession,  180; 
non-coercion  doctrine  of,  210;  signs  reso 
lution  for  constitutional  amendment,  476 

Buckner,  Simon  B.,  Confederate  lieuten 
ant-general,  stationed  at  Bowling  Green, 
254  ;  force  of,  263  ;  surrenders  Fort  Don- 
elson,  267,  268 

Buell,  Don  Carlos,  major-general  United 
States  Volunteers,  succeeds  Sherman  in 
Kentucky,  255 ;  driven  back  to  Louis 
ville,  1862,  258;  instructions  about  East 
Tennessee,  258,  259 ;  reluctance  to  move 
into  East  Tennessee,  260;  reluctance  to 
cooperate  with  Halleck,  263,  264,  269; 
ordered  forward  to  Savannah,  271 ;  ar 
rives  at  Pittsburg  Landing,  273 ;  retreats 
to  Louisville,  275,  276;  battle  of  Perry  - 
ville,  379 ;  relieved  from  command,  380 

Bull  Run,  Virginia,  battle  of,  July  21, 
1861,  226-229;  second  battle  of,  August 
30,  1862,  310,  311 

Burn  side,  Ambrose  E.,  major-general 
United  States  Volunteers,  holds  Knox- 
ville,  1863,  258;  commands  force  in 
Roanoke  Island  expedition,  277,  278 ; 
ordered  to  reinforce  McClellan,  307; 
orders  arrest  of  Vallandigham,  358 ; 
appointed  to  command  Army  of  the  Po 
tomac,  363  ;  previous  services,  363,  364  ; 
battle  of  Fredericksburg,  364,  365;  re 
lieved  from  command,  366;  ordered  to 
reinforce  Rosecrans,  388 ;  besieged  at 
Knoxville,  391  ;  repulses  Longstreet,  391 

Butler,  Benjamin  F.,  major-general 
United  States  Volunteers,  member  of 
Congress,  occupies  Baltimore,  199 ;  orders 
concerning  slaves,  220-222;  instructions 
to,  about  slaves,  223;  commands  land 


INDEX 


561 


force  in  Farr  .gut's  expedition  ngninst 
New  Orleans,  283;  in  command  at  New 
Orleans,  285  ;  report  about  negro  soldiers, 
348,  349;  proclaimed  an  outlaw  by  Jeffer 
son  Davis,  350;  seizes  City  Point,  401; 
receives  votes  for  Vice-President  at  Balti 
more  convention,  448 

Butler,  William,  relates  incident  about 
Lincoln,  53 

Butterfield,  Justin,  appointed  Commis 
sioner  of  General  Land  Office,  92;  de 
fended  by  Lincoln  from  political  attack,  92 

Cadwalader,  George,  major-general 
United  States  Volunteers,  action  in  Merry- 
man  case,  199,  200 

Cairo,  Illinois,  military  importance  of,  209, 
2.0 

Calhoun,  John,  appoints  Lincoln  deputy 
surveyor,  39,  40;  at  Springfield,  Illinois, 
52 

Cameron,  Simon,  United  States  senator, 
Secretary  of  War,  candidate  for  presiden 
tial  nomination,  1860,  144;  vote  for,  in 
Chicago  convention,  149;  tendered  cabi 
net  appointment,  163,  164;  appointed 
Secretary  ot  War,  182  ;  brings  letters  of 
Anderson  to  Lincoln,  182 ;  visits  Fremont, 
242 ;  interview  with  Sherman,  255 ;  ap 
pointed  minister  to  Russia,  289;  reference 
to  slavery  in  report  to  Congress,  320; 
moves  renomination  of  Lincoln  and  Ham- 
lin  by  acclamation,  447 

Campbell,  John  A.,  justice  United 
States  Supreme  Court ;  Confederate  com 
missioner  ;  intermediary  of  Confederate 
commissioners,  183;  at  Hampton  Roads 
conference,  482-485 ;  interviews  with  Lin 
coln,  510 

Canby,  E.  R.  S.,  brevet  major-general 
United  States  army,  receives  surrender 
of  Taylor,  525  ;  receives  surrender  of  E. 
Kirby  Smith,  526,  527 

Carpenter,  Frank  B.,  conversation  with 
Lincoln  about  emancipation  proclamation, 
331,  332 

Carpenter,  W.,  defeated  for  Illinois  legis 
lature,  1832,  34 ;  elected  in  1834,  43 

Carrick's  Ford,  Virginia,  battle  of,  July 
13,  1861,  225 

Cartter,  David  K.,  announces  change  of 
vote  to  Lincoln  in  Chicago  convention, 
151 

Cartwright,  Peter,  elected  to  Illinois 
legislature  in  1832,  34 

Chancellorsville,  Virginia,  battle  of,  May 
1-4,  1863,  369 

Charleston,  South  Carolina,  capture  of, 
February  18,  1865,  415  ;  burning  of,  416 

Chase,  Salmon  P.,  United  States  senator, 
Secretary  ef  the  Treasury,  chief  justice 
United  States  Supreme  Court,  candidate 
for  presidential  nomination,  1860,  144; 
vote  for,  in  Chicago  convention,  149; 
summoned  to  Springfield,  163;  appointed 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  182;  questions 
McClellan  at  council  of  war,  289 ;  signs 
cabinet  protest,  311 ;  favors  emancipation 
36 


by  military  commanders,  332  ;  urges  that 
parts  of  States  be  not  exempted  in  final 
emancipation  proclamation,  343;  sub 
mits  form  of  closing  paragraph,  344 ; 
presidential  aspirations  of,  439-441 ;  letter 
to  Lincoln,  440,  441 ;  resigns  from  cabinet, 
457;  effect  of  his  resignation  on  the  po 
litical  situation,  464;  looked  upon  by 
radicals  as  their  representative  in  the 
cabinet,  487 ;  hostility  to  Montgomery 
Blair,  488 ;  made  chief  justice,  490,  491; 
note  of  thanks  to  Lincoln,  491 ;  opinion 
of  Lincoln,  491 ,  administers  oath  of  office 
to  Lincoln  at  second  inauguration,  496 ; 
administers  oath  of  office  to  President 
Johnson,  545 

Chattanooga,  Tennessee,  battle  of,  No 
vember  23-25,  1863,  389-392 

Chickamauga,  Tennessee,  battle  ot,  Sep 
tember,  18-20,  1863,  386,  387 

Clary's  Grove,  Illinois,  settlement  of,  24 

Clay,  Clement  C.,  Jr.,  United  States  sen 
ator,  Confederate  agent  in  Canada,  corre 
spondence  with  Horace  Greeley,  459 

Clay,  Henry,  nominated  for  President,  28 

Clements,  Andrew  J.,  member  of  Con 
gress,  elected  to  Congress,  4 19 

Cleveland,  Ohio,  funeral  honors  to  Lin 
coln  in,  547 

Cochrane,  John,  member  of  Congress, 
brigadier-general  United  States  Volun 
teers,  nominated  for  Vice-President,  1864, 
442 

Cold  Harbor,  Virginia,  battle  of,  June 
1-12,  1864,  399 

Colfax,  Schuyler,  member  of  Congress, 
Vice-President,  letter  to,  from  Lincoln, 
I32»  T33 

Collamer,  Jacob,  member  of  Congress, 
Postmaster-General,  United  States  sena 
tor,  vote  for,  in  Chicago  convention,  149 

Columbia,  South  Carolina,  capture  and 
burning  of,  415,  416 

Columbus,  Kentucky,  evacuation  of,  269 

Confederate  States  of  America,  formed 
by  seceding  States,  178,  179;  "corner 
stone  theory,  179 ;  government  of,  fires 
on  Fort  Sumter,  189;  joined  by  North 
Carolina,  Tennessee,  and  Arkansas,  200 ; 
strength  of,  204 ;  war  measures  of, 
207 ;  capital  removed  to  Richmond,  207 ; 
strength  of,  in  the  West,  263 ;  outcry  of, 
against  emancipation  proclamation  and 
arming  of  negroes,  350,  351  ;  efficiency 
of  armies  of,  in  1863,  370;  proclamation 
calling  on  people  to  resist  Sherman's 
march,  411,  412;  nearly  in  state  of  col 
lapse,  481  ;  doomed  from  the  hour  of 
Lincoln's  reelection,  499;  depreciationof  its 
currency,  499,  500 ;  conscription  laws  of, 
500;  Confederate  Congress  makes  Lee 
general-in-chief,  500 ;  number  of  soldiers 
in  final  struggle,  507 ;  flight  of,  from 
Richmond,  515;  collapse  of  the  rebellion, 
524-527 ;  number  of  troops  surrendered, 
527 

Congress  of  the  United  States,  passes 
act  organizing  territory  of  Illinois,  19  • 


562 


INDEX 


fixes  number  of  stars  and  stripes  in  the 
flag,  19 ;  admits  as  States  Illinois,  Ala 
bama,  Maine,  and  Missouri,  19;  nullifi 
cation  debate  in,  38;  Lincoln's  service  in, 
75-90 ;  Missouri  Compromise,  94-96 ; 
Democratic  majorities  chosen  in,  in  1856, 
108 ;  agitation  over  Kansas  in,  113; 
Senator  Brown's  resolutions,  141 ;  official 
count  of  electoral  votes,  160 ;  appoints 
compromise  committees,  167  ;  Buchanan's 
annual  message  to,  December,  1860,  176, 
177  ;  convened  in  special  session  by  Presi 
dent  Lincoln,  192  ;  Lincoln's  message  to, 
May  26,  1862,  195;  legalizes  Lincoln's 
war  measures,  206 ;  meeting  and  mea 
sures  of  special  session  of  Thirty-seventh 
Congress,  217-220;  Southern  unionists 
in,  217  ;  Lincoln's  message  to,  July  4, 

1861,  218-220;    action    on   slavery,  223; 
special    session    adjourns,     223 :     House 
passes   resolution    of  thanks  to   Captain 
Wilkes,  246;  friendly  to  McClellan,  250; 
Lincoln's  message   of  Decembers,  1861, 
257,  321,  322;  interview  of   border  State 
delegations  with    Lincoln,  257,   258,  324, 
325  ;  Lincoln's  special  message,  March  6, 

1862,  323,    324 ;    passes  joint  resolution 
favoring  compensated  emancipation,  325  ; 
passes  bill  for  compensated  emancipation 
in  District  of  Columbia,  325,  326;   House 
bill  to   aid    emancipation    in    Delaware, 
Maryland,  Virginia,  Kentucky,  Tennes 
see,  and  Missouri,  326  ;  slavery  measures 
of  1862,    329;    President's   second  inter 
view  with  border  slave  State  delegations, 
329-331  ;    President's     annual    message, 
December  i,    1862,   341,  342;    passes  na 
tional  conscription  law,  354,  355 ;  act  au 
thorizing  the  President  to  suspend  writ  of 
habeas  corpus,  359,  360 ;  confers  rank  of 
lieutenant-general  on  Grant,  393  ;  admits 
representatives  and  senators  from  States 
with  provisional  governments,  419;  Presi 
dent's  annual  message,  Decembers,  1863, 
424  ;  reverses  former  action  about  seating 
members  from  "  ten-per-cent.  States,"  424; 
bills  to  aid  compensated   abolishment  in 
Missouri,  432 ;  opposition  to  Lincoln  in, 
454;    action    on    bill    of    Henry   Winter 
Davis,    454 ;    repeals  fugitive-slave    law, 
457;    confirms    Fessenden's   nomination, 
458;    Lincoln's  message   of  December  5, 
1864,  470-472;  joint  resolution  proposing 
constitutional     amendment     to     prohibit 
slavery   throughout  United   States,  471- 
476;   the  two  constitutional  amendments 
submitted  to  the  States  during  Lincoln's 
term,  475,  476;   Senate  confirms  Chase's 
nomination  as  chief  justice,  491 

Congress,  the,  Union  sailing  frigate, 
burned  by  Merrimac,  280 

Constitutional  Union  Party,  candidates 
in  1860,  153 

Conventions  :  first  national  convention  of 
Whig  party,  28;  President  Jackson  gives 
impetus  to  system  of,  52  ;  Illinois  State 
convention  nominates  Lincoln  for  Con 
gress,  74,  75;  convantion  of  "Know- 


Nothing"  party,  1856,  102;  Bloominglon 
convention,  May,  1856,  103  ;  first  national 
convention  of  Republican  party,  June  17, 
'1856,  103;  Democratic  national  conven 
tion,  June  2,  1856,  104;  Democratic  na 
tional  convention,  Charleston,  April  23, 
1860,  142 ;  it  adjourns  to  reassemble  at 
Baltimore,  June  18,  1860,  143;  Constitu 
tional  Union  Convention,  Baltimore,  May 
9,  1860,  143;  Republican  national  con 
vention,  Chicago,  May  16,  1860,  144,  147- 
151;  Decatur,  Illinois,  State  convention, 
154;  Cleveland  convention,  May  31, 
1864,  441,  442  ;  meeting  in  New  York  to 
nominate  Grant,  442,  443  :  New  Hamp 
shire  State  convention,  January  6,  1864, 
443;  Republican  national  convention, 
June  7,  1864,  446-449;  Democratic  na 
tional  convention,  1864,  postponed,  463; 
Democratic  national  convention  meets, 
466-468  ;  resolution  of  Baltimore  conven 
tion  hostile  to  Montgomery  Blair,  487 

Cook,  B.  C.,  member  of  Congress,  nomi 
nates  Lincoln  in  Baltimore  convention, 
447;  seeks  to  learn  Lincoln's  wishes 
about  Vice- Presidency,  448 

Cooper,  Samuel,  Confederate  adjutant- 
general,  joins  the  Confederacy,  208 

Corbett,  Boston,  sergeant  United  States 
army,  shoots  Booth,  543 

Corinth,  Mississippi,  captured  by  Halleck, 
275 

Couch,  Darius  N.,  major-general  United 
States  Volunteers,  militia  force  under,  in 
Pennsylvania,  372 

Cox,  Samuel, assists  Booth  and  Herold,  54? 

Crawford,  Andrew,  teacher  of  President 
Lincoln,  12 

Crittenden,  John  J.,  Attorney-General, 
United  States  senator,  advocates  reelec- 
iton  of  Douglas  to  United  States  Senate, 
126;  in  Thirty-seventh  Congress,  217; 
presents  resolution,  223 

Cumberland,  the,  Union  frigate,  sunk  by 
Merrimac,  280 

Curtis,  Samuel  R.,  member  of  Congress, 
major-general  United  States  Volunteers, 
sends  order  of  removal  to  Fremont,  242, 
243;  campaign  in  Missouri,  269;  victory 
at  Pea  Ridge,  271 

Gushing,  "William  B.,  commander 
United  States  navy,  destruction  of  the 
Albcmarle,  525 

Dahlgren,  John  A.,  rear-admiral  United 
States  navy,  at  gathering  of  officials  to 
discuss  fight  between  Monitor  and 
Merrimac,  296 

Davis,  Henry  Winter,  member  of  Con 
gress,  bill  prescribing  method  of  recon 
struction,  454;  signs  Wade-Davis  mani 
festo,  456 

Davis,  Jefferson,  Secretary  of  War, 
United  States  senator,  Confederate  Presi 
dent,  orders  that  "rebellion  must  be 
crushed  "  in  Kansas,  113;  Senate  resolu 
tions  of,  141 ;  signs  address  commending 
Charleston  disruption,  143;  statement  in 


INDEX 


563 


Senate,  143;  elected  President  of  Con 
federate  States  of  America,  179;  telegram 
to  Governor  Letcher,  197 ;  proclamation 
offering  letters  of  marque  to  privateers, 
205;  camp  of  instruction  at  Harper's 
Ferry,  209;  proclamation  of  outlawry,  350; 
message  on  emancipation  proclamation, 
35°»  351  I  appoints  Hood  to  succeed 
Johnston,  407;  visits  Hood,  and  unites 
commands  of  Beauregard  and  Hood,  409 ; 
interview  with  Jaquess  and  Gilmore,  462  ; 
interviews  with  F.  P.  Blair,  Sr.,  479-481 ; 
gives  Blair  a  letter  to  show  Lincoln,  481  ; 
appoints  peace  commission,  482;  in 
structions  to  peace  commissioners,  482; 
reports  Hampton  Roads  conference  to 
rebel  Congress,  485:  speech  at  public 
meeting,  485,  486 ;  Confederate  Congress 
shows  hostility  to,  500,  501 ;  reappoints 
J.  E.  Johnston  to  resist  Sherman,  501; 
recommendations  concerning  slaves  in 
rebel  army,  501 ;  sanctions  Lee's  letter  to 
Grant,  503 ;  conference  with  Lee,  504 ; 
flight  from  Richmond,  515;  proclamation 
from  Danville,  519,  520;  retreat  to  Greens 
boro,  North  Carolina,  520;  interview  with 
Johnston  and  Beauregard,  520;  con 
tinues  southward,  520;  dictates  proposi 
tion  of  armistice  presented  by  Johnston 
to  Sherman,  521;  requires  report  from 
Breckinridge  about  Johnston-Sherman 
agreement,  523;  instructions  to  John 
ston,  524 ;  attempt  to  reach  E.  Kirby 
Smith,  525,  526;  effort  to  gain  Florida 
coast,  526;  capture,  imprisonment,  and 
release  of,  526 

Davis,  Mrs.  Jefferson,  captured  with  her 
husband,  526 

Dawson,  John,  defeated  for  Illinois  legis 
lature,  1832,  34  ;  elected  in  1834,  43 

Dayton,  William  L.,  United  States  sen 
ator,  minister  to  France,  nominated  for 
Vice- President,  104;  vote  for,  in  Chicago 
convention,  149 

Delano,  Columbus,  member  of  Congress, 
Secretary  of  the  Interior,  in  Baltimore 
convention,  447 

Delaware,  State  of,  secession  feeling  in, 
201;  rejects  compensated  abolishment, 

322»  323 

Democratic  Party,  party  of  slavery  ex 
tension,  102;  nominates  Buchanan  and 
Breckinridge  in  1856,  104 ;  disturbed  by 
Buchanan's  attitude  on  slavery,  116;  pro- 
slavery  demands  of,  140,  141 ;  national 
conventions  of,  1860,  142-144  ;  candidates 
in  1860,  152,  153;  opposition  to  emanci 
pation  measures  and  conscription  law, 
354)  355-  adopts  McClellan  for  presiden 
tial  candidate,  355  ;  interest  in  Vallandig- 
ham,  358;  attitude  on  slavery,  437,  438, 
472,  473 ;  convention  postponed,  463 ; 
national  convention,  1864,  466-468 

Dennison,  William,  governor  of  Ohio, 
Postmaster-General,  permanent  chairman 
of  Republican  national  convention,  1864, 
446;  succeeds  Blair  as  Postmaster-Gen 
eral,  489,  490 


Dickinson,  Daniel  S.,  United  States  sen 
ator,  candidate  for  vice-presidential  nom 
ination,  1864,  448,  449 

Doherty,  E.  P.,  lieutenant  United  States 
army,  captures  Booth  and  Herold,  543 

Donelson,  Andrew  J.,  nominated  for 
Vice-President,  102 

Dorsey,  Azel  W.,  teacher  of  President 
Lincoln,  12 

Douglas,  Stephen  A.,  member  of  Con 
gress,  United  States  senator,  at  Spring 
field,  Illinois,  52;  challenges  young  Whigs 
of  Springfield  to  debate,  62 ;  elected  to 
United  States  Senate,  75 ;  champions  re 
peal  of  Missouri  Compromise,  95 ;  speech 
at  Illinois  State  fair,  96;  at  Peoria,  96; 
agreement  with  Lincoln,  99 ;  on  Dred 
Scott  case,  109,  no;  denounces  Lecomp- 
ton  Constitution,  116,  117 ;  hostility  of 
Buchanan  administration  toward,  117; 
Lincoln-Douglas  joint  debate,  121-125; 
speeches  in  the  South,  128,  129;  answer 
to  Senator  Brown,  129;  references  to  Lin 
coln,  130;  Ohio  speeches,  133;  "Harper's 
Magazine"  essay,  134  ;  fight  over  nomi 
nation  of,  for  President,  1860,  142-144  ; 
nominated  for  President,  143;  speeches 
during  campaign  of  1860,  156;  vote  for, 
160 

Douglass,  Frederick,  conversation  with 
Lincoln,  352 

Draft,  Congress  passes  national  conscrip 
tion  law,  354;  opposition  of  Governor 
Seymour  to,  355-357  ;  riots  in  New  York, 
35°.  357-  dissatisfaction  in  other  places, 
357  '»  opposition  of  Vallandigham  to,  358 

Dred  Scott  case,  decision  of  Supreme 
Court  in,  108,  109;  protest  of  North 
against,  109 ;  Senator  Douglas  on,  109, 
no 

Dresser,  Rev.  Charles,  marries  Abra 
ham  Lincoln  and  Mary  Todd,  68,  69 

DuPont,  Samuel  F.,  rear-admiral  United 
States  navy,  commands  fleet  in  Port  Royal 
expedition,  245 

Durant,  Thomas  J.,  mentioned  in  letter 
of  Lincoln's,  334,  335 

Early,  Jubal  A.,  Confederate  lieutenant- 
general,  threatens  Washington,  403 ;  in 
flicts  damage  on  Blair's  estate,  488 

Eckert,  Thomas  T.,  brevet  brigadier- 
general  United  States  Volunteers,  sent  to 
meet  peace  commissioners  at  Hampton 
Roads,  482 ;  refuses  to  allow  peace  com 
missioners  to  proceed,  483 

Edwards,  Cyrus,  desires  commissioner- 
ship  of  General  Land  Office,  92 

Edwards,  Ninian  W.,  one  of  "Long 
Nine,"  63 

Edwards,  Mrs.  Ninian  W.,  sister  of 
Mrs.  Lincoln,  63 

Ellsworth,  E.  E.,  colonel  United  States 
Volunteers,  assassination  of,  214 

Emancipation,  Lincoln-Stone  protest,  47; 
Lincoln's  bill  for,  in  District  of  Columbia, 
86,  87 :  Missouri  Compromise,  94,  95 ; 
Fremont's  proclamation  of,  236-238 ;  dis- 


564 


INDEX 


cussed  in  President's  message  of  December 
3,  1861,  321,  322  ;  Lincoln  offers  Delaware 
compensated  abolishment,  322,  323  ;  spe 
cial  message  of  March  6,  1862,  323,  324  ; 
Congress  passes  bill  for,  in  District  of 
Columbia,  325,  326  ;  bill  to  aid  it  in  border 
slave  States,  326;  Hunter's  order  of,  327; 
measures  in  Congress  relating  to,  328, 
329;  Lincoln's  second  interview  with 
delegations  from  border  slave  States,  329— 
331  ;  Lincoln's  conversation  with  Carpen 
ter  about,  331,  332  ;  first  draft  of  emanci 
pation  proclamation  read  to  cabinet,  331, 
332;  President's  interview  with  Chicago 
clergymen,  337-339;  Lincoln  issues  pre 
liminary  emancipation  proclamation,  339- 
341  ;  annual  message  of  December  i,  1862, 
341,  342;  President  issues  final  emancipa 
tion  proclamation,  342-346;  President's 
views  on,  346,  347;  arming  of  negro  sol 
diers,  348,  350;  Lincoln's  letters  to  Banks 
about  emancipation  in  Louisiana,  423-425'; 
slavery  abolished  in  Louisiana,  426;  sla 
very  abolished  in  Arkansas,  427  ;  slavery 
abolished  in  Tennessee,  429;  slavery 
abolished  in  Missouri,  432-434  ;  Maryland 
d  abolis 


refuses  offer  of  compensate 


ishment, 


434  ;  slavery  abolished  in  Maryland,  435, 
436  ;  Republican  national  platform  favors 
Constitutional  amendment  abolishing 
slavery,  446;  Constitutional  amendment 
prohibiting  slavery  in  United  States,  471- 
476;  two  Constitutional  amendments  af 
fecting  slavery  offered  during  Lincoln's 
term,  475,476;  Lincoln's  draft  of  joint 
resolution  offering  the  South  $400,000,000, 
493;  Jefferson  Davis  recommends  em 
ployment  of  negroes  in  army,  with  eman 
cipation  to  follow,  501.  See  Slavery 

England,  public  opinion  in,  favorable  to 
the  South,  211  ;  excitement  in,  over  Trent 
affair,  246;  joint  expedition  to  Mexico, 
451  ;  "  neutrality  "  of,  525 

Ericsson,  John,  inventor  of  the  Monitor, 
279 

Evarts,  William  M.,  Secretary  of  State, 
United  States  senator,  nominates  Seward 
for  President,  149  ;  moves  to  make  Lin 
coln's  nomination  unanimous,  151 

Everett,  Edward,  member  of  Congress, 
minister  to  England,  Secretary  of  State, 
United  States  senator,  candidate  for  Vice- 
President,  1860,  153 

Ewell,  Richard  S.,  Confederate  lieuten 
ant-general,  in  retreat  to  Appomattox,5ii  ; 
statement  about  burning  of  Richmond, 
516 

Ewing,  Thomas,  Secretary  of  the  Inte 
rior,  defended  by  Lincoln  against  political 
attack,  92 

Fair  Oaks,  Virginia,  battle  of,  302 
Farragut,    David    G.,    admiral    United 
States  navy,  captures  New  Orleans  and 
ascends  the  Mississippi,  282-287  :  ascends 


Mississippi  a  second  time,  287;  men 
tioned,  328,  329,  381  ;  operations  against 
Port  Hudson,  382 ;  Mobile  Bay,  468,  525  Fremont 


Farrand,  Ebenezer,  captain  Confederate 

navy,  surrender  of,  525 
Fessenden,  "William  P.,  United  States 

senator,  Secretary  of  the    Treasury,  be 

comes   Secretary  of  the   Treasury,  458  ; 

agrees   with    President    against    making 

proffers  of  peace  to  Davis,  463  ;    resigns 

from  cabinet,  491,  492 
Field,  David    Dudley,   escorts   Lincoln 

to  platform  at  Cooper  Institute,  138 
Fillmore,  Millard,  thirteenth  President  of 

the  United  States,  nominated  by  Know- 

Nothing  party  for  President,  1856,  102 
Five  Forks,  Virginia,  battle  of,'  April  i, 

1865,  507-509 
Floyd,  John    B.,  Secretary  of  War,  Con 

federate   brigadier-general,  escapes   from 

Fort  Donelson,  268 
Foote,  Andrew  H.,  rear-admiral  United 

States   navy,  capture   of  Island  No.   10, 

274;  proceeds  to  Fort  Pillow,  274 
Forrest,  Nathan  B.,  Confederate  lieuten 

ant-general,    with     Hood's     army,    410; 

defeat  of,  525 
Fort  Donelson,   Tennessee,   capture  of. 

266-268 
Fort  Fisher,  North  Carolina,  capture  of, 

414,  481,  525 

Fort  Harrison,  Virginia,  capture  of,  500 
Fort  Henry,  Tennessee,  capture  of,  266 
Fort  Jackson,  Louisiana,  capture  of,  282- 

285 
Fort    McAllister,   Georgia,    stormed  by 

Sherman,  412 
Fort    Pillow,  Tennessee,   evacuation   of, 

286  ;  massacre  of  negro  troops  at,  351 
Fort  Pulaski,  Georgia,  capture  of,  278 
Fort  Randolph,  Tennessee,  evacuation 

of,  286 
Fort     Stedman,     Virginia,     assault    of, 

505,  506 
Fort   St.  Philip,  Louisiana,   capture  of, 

282-285 
Fort   Sumter,  South   Carolina,  occupied 

by  Anderson,  177,  178;  attempt  to  rein 

force,  178;    cabinet  consultations  about, 

182-184;  defense  and  capture  of,  189,190 
Fortress   Monroe,    Virginia,  importance 

of,  209 
Fox,  Gustavus  V.,   Assistant   Secretary 

of  the  Navy,  ordered  to  aid  Sumter,  184; 

sends  the  President  additional  news  about 

fight  between  Monitor  and  Merrimac, 

296,  297 
France,  public  opinion  in,  favorable  to  the 

South,  21  1  ;  joint  expedition  to  Mexico, 

451  ;   "neutrality"  of,  525 
Franklin,  Benjamin,  on   American  for 

ests,  and  the  spirit  of  independence  they 

fostered,  17 
Franklin,  Tennessee,  battle  of,  November 

30,  1864,  410 
Franklin,    W.  B.,   brevet  major-general 

United    States  army,  advises   movement 

on  Manassas,  289 
Fredericksburg,   Virginia,  battle  of,  De 


cember  13,  1862,  364 

,  John  C.,  United  States  senator, 


INDEX 


565 


major-general  United  States  army,  nomi 
nated  for  President,  1856,  103;  made 
major-general,  233 ;  opportunities  and  limi 
tations  of,  253-235  ;  criticism  of,  235  ;  quai- 
rel  with  Blair  family,  236,  487;  proclama 
tion  freeing  slaves,  236,  237,  432  ;  refuses 
to  revoke  proclamation,  238 ;  removed 
from  command  of  Western  Department, 
241-243;  commands  Mountain  Depart 
ment,  299;  ordered  to  form  junction  with 
McDowell  and  Shields,  ^06;  in  Army  of 
Virginia,  310;  nominated  for  President, 
1864,  442;  withdraws  from  the  contest, 
442 

Fusion,  attempts  at,  in  campaign  of  1860, 
157.  158 

Gamble,  Hamilton  P..,  provisional  gov 
ernor  of  Missouri,  calls  State  convention 
together,  433 ;  death  of,  434 

Garnett,  Robert  S.,  Confederate  brign- 
adier-general,  killed  at  Carrick's  Ford, 

22^ 

Gentry,  Allen,  makes  flatboat  trip  with 
Lincoln,  16 

Gentry,  James,  enters  land  at  Gentry- 
ville,  9;  sends  Lincoln  to  New  Orleans,  16 

Gettysburg,  Pennsylvania,  battle  of,  July 
!-•},  1863,372-375;  address  of  Mr.  Lincoln 
at,"  376,  377 

Giddings,  Joshua  R.,  member  of  Con 
gress,  approves  Lincoln's  bill  abolishing 
slavery  in  District  of  Columbia,  87; 
amendment  to  Chicago  platform,  148,  149 

Gillmore,  Quincy  A.,  brevet  major-gen 
eral  United  States  army,  siege  of  Fort 
Pulaski,  278 

Gilmer,  John  A.,  member  of  Congress, 
tendered  cabinet  appointment,  164 

Gilmore,  J.  R.,  visits  Jefferson  Davis  with 
Jaquess,  462 

Gist,  William  H.,  governor  of  South 
Carolina,  inaugurates  secession,  175 

Goldsborough,  L.  M.,  rear-admiral 
United  States  navy,  commands  fleet  in 
Roanoke  Island  expedition,  277,  278 

Gordon,  John  B.,  Confederate  lieutenant- 
general,  United  States  senator,  in  assault 
of  Fort  Stedman,  504,  505  ;  in  defense  of 
Petersburg,  509 

Graham,  Mentor,  makes  Lincoln  election 
clerk,  23,  24;  advises  Lincoln  to  study 
grammar,  25;  aids  Lincoln  to  study  sur 
veying,  40 

Grant,  Ulysses  S., eighteenth  President  of 
the  United  States,  general,  and  general-in- 
chief  United  States  army,  early  life,  264 ; 
letter  offering  services  to  War  Depart 
ment,  264,  265;  commissioned  by  Gov 
ernor  Yates,  265 ;  reconnaissance  toward 
Columbus,  265  ;  urges  movement  on  Fort 
Henry,  265,  266;  capture  of  Forts  Henry 
and  Donelson,  266-268;  ordered  forward 
to  Savannah,  271  ;  Pittsburg  Landing, 
272-274 ;  asks  to  be  relieved,  275 ;  co 
operates  with  adjutant-general  of  the 
army  in  arming  negroes,  350;  repulses 
rebels  at  luka  and  Corinth,  380;  Vicks- 


burg  campaign,  380-383 ;  ordered  to 
Chattanooga,  389;  battle  of  Chattanooga, 
390,  391  ;  pursuit  of  Bragg,  391,  392 ; 
speech  on  accepting  commission  of  lieuten 
ant-general,  394  ;  visits  Army  of  the  Poto 
mac  and  starts  west,  394 ;  placed  in  com 
mand  of  all  the  armies,  394 ;  conference 
with  Sherman,  395;  plan  ot  campaign, 
395.  397 :  returns  to  Culpepper,  395  ;  fear 
of  presidential  interference,  395,  39^;  let 
ter  to  Lincoln,  396;  strength  and  position 
of  his  army,  396,  397 ;  instructions  to 
Meade,  397 ;  battle  of  the  Wilderness,  398  ; 
Spottsylvania  Court  House,  398,  399  ;  re 
port  to  Washington,  399;  Cold  Harbor, 
399 ;  letter  to  Washington,  399,  400 ; 
siege  of  Petersburg,  400-402 ;  sends 
Wright  to  Washington,  403;  withholds 
consent  to  Sherman's  plan,  410;  gives 
his  consent.  411  ;  orders  to  Sherman,  413; 
adopts  Sherman's  plan,  414;  attempt  to 
nominate  him  for  President,  1864,  442, 
443  ;  depressing  influence  on  political  sit 
uation  of  his  heavy  fighting,  463  ;  admits 
peace  commissioners  to  his  headquarters, 
483;  despatch  to  Stanton,  484;  pushing 
forward,  502;  telegraphs  Lee's  letter  to 
Washington,  503;  reply  to  Lee,  504 ; 
orders  to  General  Parke.  505 ;  issues 
orders  for  the  final  movement  of  the  war, 
506;  number  of  men  under  his  command  in 
final  struggle,  507 ;  his  plan,  507  ;  battle  of 
Five  Forks,  507-509 ;  orders  Sheridan  to 
get  on  Lee's  line  of  retreat,  509,  510 ;  sends 
Humphreys  to  Sheridan's  assistance,  509; 
telegram  to  Lincoln,  509 ;  pursuit  of  Lee, 

?  10-513;  sends  Sheridan's  despatch  to 
,incoln,  511;  correspondence  with  Lee, 
512,  513  ;  receives  Lee's  surrender,  513- 
515;  forbids  salute  in  honor  of  Lee's  sur 
render,  515;  visit  to  Lee,  515;  goes  to 
Washington,  515;  learns  terms  of  agree 
ment  between  Sherman  and  Johnson, 
523  ;  ordered  to  Sherman's  headquarters, 
523  ;  gives  Sherman  opportunity  to  mod 
ify  his  report,  523,  524  :  at  Lincoln's  last 
cabinet  meeting,  531;  invited  by  Mrs. 
Lincoln  to  Ford's  Theater,  536 

Grant,  Mrs.  U.  S.,  invited  by  Mrs.  Lin 
coln  to  Ford's  Theater,  536 

Greeley,  Horace,  hears  Lincoln's  Cooper 
Institute  speech,  138;  "open  letter"  to 
Lincoln,  335;  Niagara  Falls  conference, 
458-461  ;  effect  of  his  mission  on  political 
situation,  464 

Halleck,  Henry  Wager,  major-general 
and  general-in-chief  United  States  army, 
succeeds  Fremont,  260;  reluctance  to 
cooperate  with  Buell,  263,  264;  answers 
to  Lincoln,  263,  264 ;  instructions  to 
Grant,  264 ;  orders  Grant  to  take  Fort 
Henry,  266;  sends  reinforcements  to 
Grant,  ^67;  asks  for  command  in  th; 
West,  269  ;  plans  expedition  under  Pope, 
?7<~>;  message  to  Buell,  270;  telegrams  to 
McClellan,  270;  appeal  to  McClellan, 
271 ;  commands  Department  of  the  Mis- 


566 


INDEX 


sissippi,  271 ;  orders  Pope  to  join  him, 
274;  march  on  Corinth,  275;  capture  of 
Corinth,  275 ;  sends  Buell  to  East  Ten 
nessee,  275  ;  ordered  to  reinforce  McClel- 
Jan,  307;  general-in-chief,  309;  visit  to 
McClellan,  309 ;  orders  Army  of  Potomac 
back  to  Acquia  Creek,  309 ;  letter  to  Mc 
Clellan,  309,  310;  orders  McClellan  to 
support  Pope,  311;  telegram  to  McClel 
lan,  317;  mentioned,  328,  329;  asks  to  be 
relieved,  365  ;  quarrel  with  Hooker,  372 ; 
urges  Meade  to  active  pursuit  of  Lee, 
375;  plans  for  Western  campaign,  379; 
urges  Buell  to  move  into  East  Tennessee, 
380;  orders  Rosecrans  to  advance,  385, 
386 ;  at  council  to  consider  news  of  Chat 
tanooga,  388;  President's  chief  of  staff, 
394 ;  conduct  during  Early's  raid,  403 ; 
note  to  War  Department  about  Blair,  488 ; 
orders  to  Meade,  523 

Hamlin,  Hannibal,  United  States  senator, 
Vice-President,  nominated  for  Vice-Presi 
dent,  151 ;  Cameron  moves  his  renomina- 
tion,  447;  candidate  for  vice-presidential 
nomination  in  1864,  448,  449 

Hanks,  John,  tells  of  Lincoln's  frontier 
labors,  15;  flatboat  voyage  with  Lincoln, 
22,  23  ;  at  Decatur  convention,  154  . 

Hanks,  Joseph,  teaches  Thomas  Lincoln 
carpenter's  trade,  5 

Hanks,  Nancy.  See  Lincoln,  Nancy 
Hanks 

Hardee,  William  J.,  lieutenant-colonel 
United  States  army,  Confederate  lieuten 
ant-general,  council  with  Johnston  and 
Beauregard,  267 ;  evacuates  Savannah 
and  Charleston,  415;  joins  Johnston,  416 

Hardin,  John  J.,  member  of  Congress, 
colonel  United  States  Volunteers,  at 
Springfield,  Illinois,  52;  elected  to  Con 
gress,  73;  killed  in  Mexican  War,  75 

Harper's  Ferry,  Virginia,  John  Brown 
raid  at,  134;  burning  of  armory,  209;  cap 
tured  by  Lee,  September  15,  1862,  315 

Harris,  Miss  Clara  W.,  attends  Ford's 
Theater  with  Mrs.  Lincoln,  536;  assists 
Mrs.  Lincoln,  539 

Harrison,  George  M.,  Lincoln's  mess 
mate  in  Black  Hawk  War,  33 

Hartford,  the,  Union  cruiser,  Farragut's 
flagship,  284,  285 

Hatteras  Inlet,  North  Carolina,  capture 
efforts  at,  August  29,  1861,  245 

Hay,  John,  assistant  private  secretary  to 
Lincoln,  brevet  colonel  and  assistant 
adjutant-general  United  States  Volun 
teers,  ambassador  to  England,  Secretary  of 
State,  accompanies  Mr.  Lincoln  to  Wash 
ington,  168 ;  shows  Lincoln  letter  of  in 
quiry  about  Vice-Presidency,  448;  mission 
to  Canada,  460;  at  Lincoln's  death-bed,  540 

Hazel,  Caleb,  teacher  of  President  Lin 
coln,  6 

Herndon,  A.  G.,  defeated  for  Illinois 
legislature,  1832,  34 

Herndon,  "  Jim  "  and  "  Row,"  sell 
Lincoln  and  Berry  their  store,  35 

Herndon,   William    H.,   Lincoln's   law 


partner,  158;  assumes  Lincoln's  law 
business  during  campaign,  158 

Herold,  David  E.,  in  conspiracy  to  assas 
sinate  Lincoln,  534;  chosen  to  assist 
Booth,  536 ;  deposits  arms  in  tavern  at 
Surrattsville,  536 ;  accompanies  Booth  in 
his  flight,  542,  543;  capture  of,  543;  exe 
cution  of,  544 

Hicks,  Thomas  H.,  governor  of  Mary 
land,  United  States  senator,  icply  to  Lin 
coln's  call  foi  volunteers,  193 ;  speech  at 
mass-meeting,  193;  protest  against  land 
ing  of  troops  at  Annapolis,  198;  calls 
meeting  of  Maryland  legislature,  198 

Hplcomb,  James  P.,  Confederate  agent 
in  Canada,  correspondence  with  Horace 
Greeley,  459 

Holt,  Joseph,  Posh  .aster-General,  Sec 
retary  of  War,  judge-advocate  general 
United  States  army,  calls  Scott  to  Wash 
ington,  172 ;  report  on  'Knights  of  the 
Golden  Circle,  361 ;  favored  by  Swett  for 
Vice-President,  448;  declines  attorney- 
generalship,  491 

Hood,  John  B.,  Confederate  general,  suc 
ceeds  Johnston,  407;  evacuates  Atlanta, 
407,  468 ;  truce  with  Sherman,  408 ; 
placed  under  command  of  Beauregard, 
409;  moves  to  Tuscumbia,  410;  Frank 
lin  and  Nashville,  410;  his  movements 
delay  reconstruction  in  Tennessee,  429 

Hooker,  Joseph,  brevet  major-general 
United  States  army,  succeeds  Burnside 
in  command  of  Army  of  the  Potomac,  366 ; 
submits  plan  of  campaign  to  Lincoln,  368  ; 
battle  of  Chancellorsville,  369,  370;  criti 
cism  of,  370 ;  foresees  Lee's  northward 
campaign,  370;  proposes  quick  march  to 
capture  Richmond,  371 ;  follows  Lee, 
372;  asks  to  be  relieved,  372;  ordered  to 
reinforce  Rosecrans,  388 ;  reaches  Chat 
tanooga,  389 ;  in  battle  of  Chattanooga, 
390-391 

Hume,  John  F.,  moves  that  Lincoln's 
nomination  be  made  unanimous,  447 

Humphreys,  Andrew  A.,  brevet  major- 
general  United  States  army,  in  recapture 
of  Fort  Stedman,  505,  506;  ordered  to 
assist  Sheridan,  509 

Hunt,  Randall,  tendered  cabinet  appoint 
ment,  164 

Hunter,  David,  brevet  major-general, 
United  States  army,  asked  to  assist  Fre 
mont,  235,  236;  ordered  to  relieve  Fre 
mont,  243;  order  of  emancipation,  327 ; 
experiment  with  negro  soldiers,  348 ;  de 
clared  an  outlaw  by  Confederate  War 
Department,  350 

Hunter,  R.  M.  T.,  United  States  senator, 
Confederate  Secretary  of  State,  appointed 
peace  commissioner,  482;  at  Hampton 
Roads  conference,  482-485 

lies,  Elijah,  captain  Illinois  Volunteers, 
commands  company  in  Black  Hawk 
War.  33 

Illinois,  State  of,  organized  as  Territory. 
1809,  19;  admitted  as  State,  1818,  19; 


INDEX 


567 


legislative  schemes  of  internal  improve 
ment,  44,  45 ;  capital  removed  to  Spring 
field,  45;  political  struggles  over  slavery,45, 
46 ;  Lincoln-Douglas  senatorial  campaign 
in,  118-125;  ratifies  Thirteenth  Amend 
ment,  474,  475 

Island  No.  10,  Tennessee,  fortifications  at, 
269,  270  ;  surrender  of,  274 

Jackson,  Andrew,  seventh  President  of 
the  United  States,  gives  impetus  to  sys 
tem  of  party  caucuses  and  conventions, 

Jackson,  Claiborne  F.,  governor  of  Mis 
souri,  attempts  to  force  Missouri  secession, 
202-204  ;  flight  to  Springfield,  Missouri, 

Jackson,  Thomas  Jonathan  ("  Stone 
wall  "),  Confederate  lieutenant-general, 
Shenandoah  valley  campaign,  305,  306 ; 
mentioned,  328 ;  killed  at  Chancellors- 
ville,  360 

Jaquess,  James  F.,D.D.,  colonel  United 
States  Volunteers,  visits  to  the  South, 
461,  462;  interview  with  Jefferson  Davis, 
462 

Jewett,  William  Cornell,  letter  to 
Greeley,  458 

Johnson,  Andrew,  seventeenth  President 
of  the  United  States,  in  thirty-seventh 
Congress,  217;  telegram  about  East  Ten 
nessee,  259;  retains  seat  in  Senate,  419; 
appointed  military  governor  of  Tennessee, 
420;  begins  work  of  reconstruction,  428; 
nominated  for  Vice-President,  448,  449; 
popular  and  electoral  votes  for,  470;  dis 
approves  Sherman's  agreement  with 
Johnston,  523 ;  proclamation  of  amnesty, 
526 ;  plot  to  murder,  535 ;  rejoicing  of 
radicals  on  his  accession  to  the  Presi 
dency,  545;  takes  oath  of  office,  545 

Johnson,  Herschel  V.,  candidate  for  Vice- 
President,  1860,  152 

Johnston,  Albert  Sidney,  Confederate 
general,  council  with  Hardee  and  Beanre- 
gard,  267  ;  killed  at  Pittsburg  Landing, 

273 

Johnston,  John  D.,  step-brother  of  Presi 
dent  Lincoln,  flatboat  voyage  with  Lin 
coln,  22,  23 

Johnston,  Joseph  E.,  quartermaster- 
general  United  States  army,  Confederate 
general,  member  of  Congress,  joins  Con 
federacy,  196,  208 ;  understanding  with 
Beauregard,  215,  216 ;  joins  Beauregard  at 
Bull  Run,  228 ;  opinion  of  battle  of  Bull 
Run,  228  ;  retrograde  movement,  297 ; 
defeats  McClellan  at  Fair  Oaks,  302 ; 
succeeds  Bragg,  395 ;  strength  of,  in 
spring  of  1864,  405  ;  superseded  by  Hood, 
407;  again  placed  in  command,  416,  501 ; 
interview  with  Davis,  520;  begins  nego 
tiations  with  Sherman,  520 ;  meetings 
with  Sherman,  521,  522;  agreement  be 


tween  them,  522  ;  agreement  disapproved 
at  Washington,  523  ;  surrender  of,  524 
Johnston,  Sarah  Bush,  marries  Thomas 


at  Washington,  523  ;  surrender  of 
hnston,  Sarah  Bush,  marries 
Lincoln,    10  ;    improves  the  condition   of 


his  household,  10 ;  tells  of  Lincoln's  stu 
dious  habits,  13 
Jones,  Thomas,  assists  Booth  and  Herold, 

Judd,  Norman  B  ,  minister  to  Prussia, 
member  of  Congress,  nominates  Lincoln 
for  President,  1860,  149;  member  of  Lin 
coln's  suite,  173 

Kansas,  State  of,  slavery  struggle  in,  113- 
115;  Lecompton  Bill  defeated  in  Con 
gress,  117 

Kearsarge,  the,  Union  cruiser,  battle  with 
the  A  laba»ia,  525 

Kelly,  Benjamin  F.,  brevet  major-gen 
eral  United  States  Volunteers,  dash  upon 
Philippi,  225 

Kentucky,  State  of,  action  concerning 
secession,  201,  204;  legislature  asks  An 
derson  for  help,  254 ;  public  opinion  in, 
regarding  slavery,  473 

Kilpatrick,  Judson,  brevet  major-general 
United  States  army,  minister  to  Chili, 
with  Sherman  on  march  to  the  sea,  411 

Kirkpatrick,  defeated  for  Illinois  legisla 
ture,  1832,  34 

Knights  of  Golden  Circle,  extensive 
organization  of,  360,  361;  plans  and  fail 
ures  of,  360-362  ;  projected  revolution  in 
Northwestern  States,  466 

Know-Nothing  Party,  principles  of,  101, 
102;  nominates  Millard  Fillmore  for 
President,  1856,  102 

Lamon,  Ward  H.,  accompanies  Lincoln 
on  night  journey  to  Washington,  174 

Lane, Joseph, brevet  major-general  United 
States  army,  governor,  United  States  sen 
ator,  candidate  for  Vice-President  in  1860, 
153;  attempt  to  arm  negroes,  348 

Leavitt,  Humphrey  H.,  member  of 
Congress,  judge  United  States  Circuit 
Court,  denies  motion  for  habeas  corpus 
for  Vallandigham,  358 

Lecompton  Constitution,  adopted  in 
Kansas,  115;  defeated  in  Congress,  117 

Lee,  Robert  E.,  colonel  United  States 
army,  Confederate  general,  captures  John 
Brown,  134 ;  enters  service  of  Confed 
eracy,  196,  197,  208 ;  concentrates  troops 
at  Manassas  Junction,  215;  sends  troops 
into  West  Virginia,  224 ;  attacks  Mc 
Clellan  near  Richmond,  302;  campaign 
into  Maryland,  314 ;  captures  Harper's 
Ferry,  315;  battle  of  Antietam,  315;  re 
treats  across  the  Potomac,  316;  battle  of 
Chancellorsville,  369;  resolves  on  invasion 
of  the  North,  370;  crosses  the  Potomac, 
371,  372;  battle  of  Gettysburg,  372-374; 
retreats  across  the  Potomac,  375,  377; 
strength  and  position  of  his  army,  397; 
battle  of  the  Wilderness,  398 ;  Spottsyl- 
vania  Court  House,  398,  399;  Cold  Har 
bor,  399  ;  defense  of  Petersburg,  400-402  ; 
sends  Early  up  the  Shenandoah  valley, 
403 ;  despatch  about  rations  for  his  army, 
481 ;  made  general-in-chief,  500  ;  assumes 
command  of  all  the  Confederate  armies, 


568 


INDEX 


502  ;  attempt  to  negotiate  with  Grant,  502, 

503  ;  conference  with  Davis,  504  ;  attempt 
to  break  through  Grant's  lines,  504-506  ; 
number  of  men  under  his  command   in 
final   struggle,    507;    takes  command   in 
person,  507;  attacks  Warren,  507;  battle 
of  Five  Forks,  507-509;  makes  prepara 
tions   to  evacuate  Petersburg  and  Rich 
mond,  509;  begins  retreat,  510;  surrender 
of  Richmond,  510  ;  reaches  Amelia  Court 
House,    510;    starts   toward    Lynchburg, 
511;   reply  to  generals   advising  him   to 
surrender,     512;      correspondence     with 
Grant,  512,  513;    surrender  of,  513-515; 
size  of  army  surrendered  by,  524 

Letcher,  John,  member  of  Congress,  gov 
ernor  of  Virginia,  orders  seizure  of  gov 
ernment  property,  194 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  sixteenth  President 
of  the  United  States,  born  February  12, 
1809,  3,  6;  goes  to  A  B  C  schools,  6; 
early  schooling  in  Indiana,  10-13;  home 
studies  and  youthful  habits,  13-19  ;  man 
ages  ferry-boat,  15;  flatboat  trip  to  New 
Orleans,  15,  16;  employed  in  Gentryville 
store,  16;  no  hunter,  17;  kills  wild  turkey, 
17,  18;  emigrates  to  Illinois,  March  i, 
1830,  ro;  leaves  his  father's  cabin,  21  ; 
engaged  by  Denton  Offutt,  21  ;  builds 
flatboat  and  takes  it  to  New  Orleans,  22, 
23;  incident  at  Rutledge's  Mill,  22  ;  re 
turns  to  New  Salem,  23;  election  clerk, 
23,  24  ;  clerk  in  Offutt's  store,  24  ;  wrestles 
with  Jack  Armstrong,  25  ;  candidate  for 
legislature,  1832,  29;  address  "To  the 
Voters  of  Sangamon  County,"  29,  30; 
volunteers  for  Black  Hawk  War,  32  ; 
elected  captain  of  volunteer  company,  32; 
mustered  out  and  reenlists  as  private, 
32,  33  ;  finally  mustered  out,  33  ;  returns 
to  New  Salem,  33;  defeated  for  legisla 
ture,  33;  enters  into  partnership  with 
Berry,  35;  sells  out  to  the  Trent  brothers, 
36  ;  fails,  but  promises  to  pay  his  debts, 
36;  surveying  instruments  sold  for  debt, 
36;  "Honest  old  Abe,"  37;  appointed 
postmaster  of  New  Salem,  37  ;  made 
deputy  surveyor,  39,  40  ;  candidate  tor 
legislature,  1834,  41,  42;  elected  to  legis 
lature,  43  ;  begins  study  of  law,  44  ;  ad 
mitted  to  practice,  44  ;  removes  to  Spring 
field  and  forms  law  partnership  with  J.  T. 
Stuart,  44  ;  reflected  to  legislature,  44  ; 
services  in  legislature,  44-48;  manages 
removal  of  State  capital  to  Springfield, 
45;  Lincoln-Stone  protest,  47;  vote  for, 
for  Speaker  of  Illinois  House,  48;  his 
methods  in  law  practice,  49  ;  notes  for  law 
lect 


gu 


thods  in  law  practice,  49  ;  notes  for  law 
ture,  49-51  ;  his  growing  influence,  52; 
est  of  William  Butler,  53  ;  intimacy 
with  Joshua  F.  Speed,  53  ;  engaged  to 
Anne  Rutledge,  54;  her  death,  54;  his 
grief,  55;  courtship  of  Mary  Owens,  5*5- 
60;  member  of  "  Long  Nine,"  61,  62  ;  de 
bate  with  Douglas  and  others,  1839,  62, 
63  ;  meets  and  becomes  engaged  to  Mary 
Todd,  63  ;  engagement  broken,  64  ;  his 
deep  melancholy,  64  ;  letter  to  Stuart,  64  ; 


visit  to  Kentucky,  64;  letters  to  Speed, 
64,  65;  "Lost  Townships"  letters,  66; 
challenged  by  Shields,  66;  prescribes 
terms  of  the  duel,  67  ;  duel  prevented,  68  ; 
letter  to  Speed,  68 ;  marriage  to  Mary 
Todd,  November  4,  1842,  68,  69;  children 
of,  69 ;  partnership  with  Stuart  dissolved, 
( 9,  70;  law  partnership  with  S.  T.  Logan, 
70:  declines  reelection  to  legislature,  70; 
letter  to  Speed,  71 ;  letter  to  Martin  Morris, 
71-73  ;  letter  to  Speed,  73 ;  presidential 
elector,  1844,  73 ;  letters  to  B.  F.  James, 
74  ;  elected  to  Congress,  1846,  75 ;  service 
and  speeches  inCongress,  76-90  ;  votes  for 
Wilmot  Proviso,  79 ;  presidential  elector  in 
1840  and  1844,  80;  favors  General  Tay 
lor  for  President,  80-83 ;  letters  about 
Taylor's  nomination,  80—82;  letters  to 
Herndon,  81-83;  speeches  for  Taylor,  83  ; 
bill  to  prohibit  slavery  in  District  of  Col 
umbia,  86 ;  letters  recommending  office- 
seekers,  87-89 ;  letter  to  W.  H.  Herndon, 
90,  91  ;  letter  to  Speed.  91,  92;  letter  to 
DuffGreen,  92  ;  applies  for  commissioner- 
ship  of  General  Land  Office,  92 ;  defends 
Butterfield  against  political  attack,  92 ;  re 
fuses  governorship  of  Oregon,  93;  indig 
nation  at  repeal  of  Missouri  Compromise, 
94,  95 ;  advocates  reelection  of  Richard 
Yates  to  Congress,  96 ;  speech  at  Illinois 
State  Fair,  96;  debate  with  Douglas  at 
Peoria,  96-99  ;  agreement  with  Douglas, 
99;  candidate  for  United  States  Senate 
before  Illinois  legislature,  1855,  99;  with 
draws  in  favor  of  Trumbull,  100  ;  letter  to 
Robertson,  100,  101;  speech  at  Bloom- 
ington  convention,  1856,  103;  vote  for, 
for  Vice-President,  1856,  104  ;  presidential 
elector,  1856,  105;  speeches  in  campaign 
of  1856,  105;  speech  at  Republican 
banquet  in  Chicago,  106,  107;  speech  on 
Dred  Scott  case,  110-112;  nominated  for 
senator,  118,  119;  "House  divided 
against  itself"  speech,  119,  120,  127,  128; 
Lincoln-Douglas  joint  debate,  121-125; 
defeated  for  United  States  Senate,  125 ; 
analysis  of  causes  which  led  to  his  defeat, 
126,  127;  letters  to  H.  Asbury  and  A.  G. 
Henry,  127 ;  letter  to  A.  L.  Pierce  and 
others,  130,  131 ;  speech  in  Chicago,  131, 
132  ;  letter  to  M.  W.  Delahay,  132 ;  let 
ter  to  Colfax,  132,  133 ;  letter  to  S.  Gallo 
way,  133;  Ohio  speeches,  133,  134; 
criticism  of  John  Brown  raid,  134,  135; 
speeches  in  Kansas,  136,  137;  Cooper 
Institute  speech,  137-140;  speeches  in 
New  England,  140;  letter  to  T.  J.  Pickett, 
145;  candidate  for  presidential  nomina 
tion,  1860,  145;  letters  to  N.  B.  Judd, 
145,  146  ;  nominated  for  President,  1860, 
149-151 ;  speech  at  Decatur  convention, 
I53>  J545  daily  routine  during  campaign, 
158,  159;  letters  during  campaign,  159; 
elected  President,  160;  his  cabinet  pro 
gram,  161-163 ;  letter  to  Seward  offering 
cabinet  appointment,  163;  offers  Bates 
and  Cameron  cabinet  appointments,  163  ; 
summons  Chase  to  Springfield,  163;  with- 


INDEX 


569 


draws  offer  to  Cameron,  163 ;  editorial  in 
'Springfield  "Journal,"  164;  offers  cabi 
net  appointments  to  Gilmer,  Hunt,  and 
Scott,  164 ;  letters  to  W.  S.  Speer  and 
G.  D.  Prentiss,  164,  165;  correspondence 
with  Alexander  H.  Stephens,  165,  166; 
letter  to  Gilmer,  166;  letter  to  Washburne, 
166,  167;  writes  his  inaugural,  167,  168  ; 
journey  to  Washington,  168-174;  fare 
well  address  at  Springfield,  169  ;  speeches 
on  journey  to  Washington,  169-171 ;  con 
sultation  with  Judd,  173;  night  journey 
to  Washington,  173,  174;  visits  of  cere 
mony,  179,  180;  first  inauguration  of, 
180-182 ;  inaugural  address,  180-182  ;  calls 
council  to  consider  question  of  Sumter, 
182,  183;  signs  order  for  relief  of  Sum 
ter,  184  ;  answer  to  Seward's  memoran 
dum  of  April  i,  1861,187;  instructions  to 
Seward,  1865,  187;  notice  to  Governor 
Pickens,  188  ;  issues  call  for  75,000  volun 
teers,  192;  assumes  responsibility  for  war 
measutes,  195  ;  opinion  against  dispeising 
Maryland  legislature,  198,  199 ;  author 
izes  Scott  to  suspend  writ  of  habeas 
corpus,  199 ;  action  in  Merryman  case, 
200;  institutes  blockade,  705;  calls  for 
three  years'  volunteers,  206 ;  appoints 
Charles  Francis  Adams  minister  to  Kng- 
land,  211;  modifies  Seward's  despatch  of 
May  21,  212;  his  immense  duties,  212, 
213;  calls  council  of  war,  215;  message 
to  Congress,  July  4,  1861,  218-220;  post 
pones  decision  about  slaves,  22 2,  223; 
receives  news  of  defeat  at  Hull  Run,  229; 
letter  to  Hunter,  235;  letter  to  Fremont, 
237,238;  letter  to  Browning,  238-240 ;  sends 
Cameron  to  visit  Fremont,  242  ;  letter  to 
General  Curtis  about  Fremont,  242,  243 ; 
draft  of  despatch  about  Trent  affair,  247, 
248;  welcomes  McClellan  to  Washington, 
250 ;  orders  retirement  of  General  Scott, 
253 ;  memorandum  to  McClellan,  253 ; 
his  grasp  of  military  problems,  255,  256 ; 
memorandum  after  battle  of  Bull  Run, 
256;  interest  in  East  Tennessee,  256, 
257;  personally  urges  on  Congress  the 
construction  of  railroad  in  East  Tennessee, 
257, 258;  letterto  Buell,  2=18,259;  telegrams 
and  letters  to  Buell  and  Halleck,  262-264, 
268,  269 ;  places  Halleck  in  command  of 
Department  of  the  Mississippi,  271  ;  calls 
councils  of  war,  288,  289 ;  General  War  Or 
der  No.  i,  290;  Special  War  Order  No.  i, 
^91 ;  letter  to  McClellan  about  plan  of 
campaign,  291 ;  interview  with  Stanton, 
293,  294  ;  interview  with  McClellan,  295  ; 
President's  General  War  Orders  No.  2 
and  No.  3,  295 ;  receives  news  of  fight 
between  Monitor  and  Merritnac,  296; 
relieves  McClellan  from  command  of  all 
troops  except  Army  of  the  Potomac,  298 ; 
orders  McDowell  to  protect  Washington, 
299  ;  letter  to  McClellan,  299,  300 ;  letter 
to  McClellan,  303,  304  ;  visit  to  General 
Scott,  306 ;  assigns  General  Pope  to  com 
mand  of  Army  of  Virginia,  306 ;  orders 
Burnside  and  Halleck  to  reinforce  Mc 


gre 
De 


Clellan,  307  ;  letter  to  governors  of  free 
Slates,  307,  308;  accepts  300,000  new 
troops,  308;  letters  to  McClellan,  308; 
visit  to  Harrison's  Landing,  308  ;  appoints 
Halleck  general-in-chief,  309;  his  dis 
passionate  calmness  in  considering  Mc- 
Clellan's  conduct,  311;  asks  McClellan 
to  use  his  influence  with  Pope's  officers, 
313;  places  McClellan  in  command  of 
defenses  of  Washington,  313;  orders  re 
inforcements  to  McClellan,  316;  tele 
gram  to  McClellan,  316  ;  visit  to  Antietam, 
316,  317;  directions  and  letter  to  Mc 
Clellan,  317-319;  removes  him  from 
command,  319;  letter  to  Bancroft,  321; 
reference  to  slavery  in  message  to  Con 
ress,  December  3,  1861,  321,  322  ;  offers 
elaware  compensated  abolishment,  322, 
323;  special  message  of  March  6,  1862, 
proposing  joint  resolution  favoring  grad 
ual  abolishment,  323,  324  ;  letter  to  Mc- 
Dougall,  324;  interview  with  delegations 
from  border  slave  States,  324,  325  ;  signs 
bill  for  compensated  emancipation  in  Dis 
trict  of  Columbia,  326;  letter  to  Chase 
about  Hunter's  order  of  emancipation, 
327  ;  proclamation  revoking  Hunter's 
order,  ^27,  328  ;  second  interview  with 
border  State  delegations  in  Congress,  329- 
331  ;  conversation  with  Carpenter  about 
emancipation,  331,  332;  reads  draft  of 
first  emancipation  proclamation  to  cabinet, 
33T>  332>  tells  Seward  and  Welles  of  his 
purpose  to  issue  emancipation  proclama 
tion,  ^32  ;  letter  to  Reverdy  Johnson, 
334;  letter  to  Cuthbert  Bullitt,  334,  335; 
letter  to  Horace  Greeley,  335-337  ;  inter 
view  with  Chicago  clergymen,  337-339  ; 
isbiies  preliminary  emancipation  proclama 
tion,  339-341  ;  annual  message  of  De 
cember  i,  1862,  341,  342  ;  issues  final 
emancipation  proclamation,  January  i, 
1863,  342-346;  letter  to  A.  G.  Hodges, 
346,  347  ;  letters  about  arming  negroes, 
350;  speech  about  Fort  Pillow  massacre, 
351)  352  '•>  interview  with  Frederick  Doug 
lass,  352  ;  letter  to  Governor  Seymour, 
356;  action  in  case  of  Vallandigham,  358, 
359;  suspends  privilege  of  writ  of  habeas 
corpus,  360;  attitude  toward  Knights 
of  the  Golden  Circle,  361  ;  appoints  Burn- 
side  to  command  Army  of  the  Potomac, 
363  ;  telegram  to  Burnside,  and  letter  to 
Halleck  about  Burnside,  365  ;  letter  to 
Burnside,  366;  relieves  Burnside  and  ap 
points  Hooker  to  succeed  him,  366;  letter 
to  Hooker,  366-368;  criticism  on  Hooker's 
plan  of  campaign,  368;  continued  belief 
in  Hooker,  370  ;  instructions  to  Hooker, 
370,  371  ;  telegrams  to  Hooker,  371  ;  ap 
points  Meade  to  command  Army  of  the 
Potomac,  372  ;  urges  Meade  to  active  pur 
suit  of  I,ee,  375;  letter  to  Meade,  375, 
376  ;  Gettysburg  address,  376,  377  ;  letter 
to  Grant,  384,  385;  orders  Rosecrans  to 
advance,  385,  386;  note  to  Halleck,  388; 
telegram  to  Rosecrans,  388;  orders  re 
inforcements  to  Rosecrans,  388;  signs 


INDEX 


bill  making  Grant  lieutenant-general, 
393  ;  address  on  presenting  his  commis 
sion,  393,  394  ;  letter  to  Grant,  396 ;  under 
fire,  403;  letter  to  Sherman,  412,  413; 
appoints  military  governors  for  Ten 
nessee,  Louisiana,  Arkansas,  and  North 
Carolina,  419;  his  theory  of  "  reconstruc 
tion,"  419  ;  message  to  Congress,  July  4, 
1861,  419;  letter  to  Cuthbert  Bullitt,  420, 
421 ;  circular  letter  to  military  governors, 
421,  422 ;  letter  to  Governor  Shepley,  422  ; 
letter  to  General  Banks,  423 ;  references 
to  reconstruction  in  message  to  Congress, 
December  8,  1863,  424;  amnesty  procla 
mation,  Decembers,  1863,  424;  letter  to 
General  Banks,  424,  425  ;  letters  to  Gen 
era]  Steele,  427,  428  ;  letters  to  Johnson, 
428,  429 ;  letter  to  Drake  and  others, 
430-432 ;  revokes  Fremont's  proclama 
tion  freeing  slaves,  432  ;  letter  to  General 
Schofield,  433;  directs  Stanton  to  issue 
order  regulating  raising  of  colored  troops, 
434,  435;  letter  to  H.  W.  Hoffman,  435, 
436;  Democratsand  Fremont  Republicans 
criticize  his  action  on  slavery,  437,  438 ; 
relations  with  his  cabinet,  438,  439 ;  atti 
tude  toward  Chase,  439-441,  444  ;  letter 
to  Chase,  441  ;  letter  to  F.  A.  Conkling 
and  others,  443 ;  sentiment  in  favor  of  his 
reelection,  443,  444  ;  letter  to  Washburne 
about  second  term,  444 ;  letters  to  Gen 
eral  Schurz,  444, 445 ;  instructions  tooffice- 
holders,  445  ;  speeches  during  campaign, 
445  ;  renominated  for  President,  447,  448; 
refuses  to  intimate  his  preference  for  Vice- 
President,  448,  449 ;  indorsement  on 
Nicolay's  letter,  448,  449;  reply  to  com 
mittee  of  notification,  450  ;  letter  accept 
ing  nomination,  450,  451 ;  his  attitude 
toward  the  French  in  Mexico,  451,  452; 
opposition  to,  in  Congress,  454 ;  on 
Davis's  reconstruction  bill,  454-456 ; 
proclamation  of  July  8,  1864,  456;  ac 
cepts  Chase's  resignation,  457 ;  nominates 
David  Tod  to  succeed  him,  457 ;  substi 
tutes  name  of  W.  P.  Fessenden,  457, 
458  ;  correspondence  with  Greeley,  458- 
460;  criticized  because  of  Niagara  con 
ference,  460,  461 ;  draft  of  letter  to  C.  D. 
Robinson,  461 ;  indorsement  on  Jaquess's 
application  to  go  South,  462 ;  answer  to 
Raymond's  proposition,  463 ;  interview 
with  John  T.  Mills,  464,  465 ;  memoran 
dum,  August  23,  1864,  466;  speech  on 
morning  after  election,  469,  470;  popular 
and  electoral  votes  for,  470;  summing  up 
of  results  of  the  election,  470 ;  suggests 
key-note  of  Morgan's  opening  speech  be 
fore  Baltimore  convention,  471 ;  message 
to  Congress,  December  6,  1864,  471,  472, 
476-478;  answer  to  serenade,  474,  475; 
opinion  on  ratification  of  Thirteenth 
Amendment,  475 ;  two  constitutional 
amendments  offered  to  the  people  during 
his  administration,  476;  gives  Blair  per 
mission  to  go  South,  478 ;  letter  to  Blair 
in  reply  to  Jefferson  Davis,  481 ;  sends 
Major  Eckert  to  meet  peace  commission 


ers,  482  ;  instructions  to  Seward,  483 ; 
instructions  to  Grant,  483  ;  goes  to  Fortress 
Monroe,  484 ;  conference  with  peace 
commissioners,  484,  485;  pressure  upon 
him  to  dismiss  Montgomery  Blair,  487, 
489  ;  personal  regard  for  the  Blairs,  488  ; 
letter  to  Stanton,  488  ;  lecture  to  cabinet, 
489 ;  requests  resignation  of  Blair,  489 ; 
nominates  Chase  for  chief  justice,  490,  491 ; 
opinion  of  Chase,  490,  491 ;  offers  attor 
ney-generalship  to  Holt  and  Speed,  491 ; 
offers  cabinet  appointment  to  Governor 
Morgan,  492;  appoints  Hugh  McCulloch 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  492;  indorse- 
mentsonUsher's  resignation, 492;  his  plans 
for  the  future,  492,  493 ;  submits  to  cabi 
net  draft  of  joint  resolution  offering  the 
South  $400,000,000,  493 ;  his  second  in 
auguration,  493-496 ;  the  second  inaugu 
ral,  494-496 ;  letter  to  Weed,  407 :  his 
literary  rank,  497 ;  last  public  address, 
498;  despatch  to  Grant,  March  3,  1865, 
503,  504 ;  at  City  Point,  506 ;  telegraphs 
Grant,  "  Let  the  thing  be  pressed,"  511 ; 
visit  to  Richmond,  517,  518 ;  interviews 
with  John  A.  Campbell,  519 ;  gives  per 
mission  for  meeting  of  Virginia  legislature, 
519 ;  regret  of  army  for,  529 ;  return  to 
Washington,  530 ;  last  cabinet  meeting, 
531,  532;  i4th  of  April,  532,  533, 
536—540;  danger  from  assassination,  533, 
534  ;  interest  in  the  theater,  536  ;  attends 
Ford's  Theater,  536,  537;  death  0^538- 
540;  his  death  prevents  organized  re 
joicing  at  downfall  of  rebellion,  544 ; 
mourning  for,  544-548  5  feeling  of  radi 
cals  at  death  of,  545;  funeral  ceremonies 
of,  in  Washington,  545,  546 ;  funeral 
journey  to  Springfield,  Illinois,  546,  547; 
burial  at  Springfield,  547,  548;  his  char 
acter  and  career,  549-555 ;  his  place  in 
history,  555 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  grandfather  of  the 
President,  emigrates  from  Virginia  to  Ken 
tucky,  3,  4  ;  killed  by  Indians,  4 

Lincoln,  Edward  Baker,  son  of  Presi 
dent  Lincoln,  birth  of,  69  ;  death  of,  69 

Lincoln,  Isaac,  settles  on  Holston  River,  5 

Lincoln,  Josiah,  uncle   of  the  President, 

foes   to    fort   for  assistance   against   In- 
ians,  4 

Lincoln,  Mary,  aunt  of  the  President,  4 
Lincoln,  Mary   Todd,  wife  of  the  Presi 
dent,   engagement    to    Lincoln,    63,  64 ; 
writes    "Lost    Townships *'    letters,    66; 
marriage  to  Lincoln, November  4, 1842,  68, 
69  ;  children  of,  69 ;  death  of,  69 ;  accom 
panies     Mr.    Lincoln      to     Washington, 
168  ;    drive  with   her  husband,  April,  14, 
1865,  532;  invites  friends  to  attend  Ford's 
Theater,   536  ;    attends  theater  with   her 
husband,  538 ;  at  Lincoln's  death-bed,  539 
Lincoln,   Mordecai,  uncle  of  the  Presi 
dent,  defends  homestead  against  Indians, 
4  ;  inherits  his  father's  lands,  4 
Lincoln,  Nancy,  aunt  of  the  President,  4 
Lincoln,  Nancy  Hanks,  mother  of  the 
President,  marries  Thomas  Lincoln,  June 


INDEX 


571 


12,  1806,  5;  teaches  her  husband  to  sign 
his  name,  5  ;  birth  of  daughter,  5  ;  birth 
of  Abraham,  son  of,  6;  death  of,  9 

Lincoln,  Robert  Todd,  son  of  the  Presi 
dent,  Secretary  of  War,  minister  to  Kng- 
land,  birth  of,  69;  public  services,  69; 
accompanies  Mr.  Lincoln  to  Washington, 
168;  on  Grant's  staff,  517;  with  his  fa 
ther,  April  14,  1865,  532  ;  at  Lincoln's 
death-bed,  540 

Lincoln,  Samuel,  ancestor  of  the  Presi 
dent,  emigrates  to  America,  3 

Lincoln,  Sarah,  sister  of  the  President, 
born,  5  ;  goes  to  school,  6 

Lincoln,  Sarah  Bush  Johnston.  See 
Johnston,  Sarah  Bush 

Lincoln,  Thomas,  father  of  the  President, 

3  ;  narrowly  escapes  capture  by  Indians, 

4  ;   learns  carpenter's   trade,   5  ;    marries 
Nancy  Hanks,  June  12,  1806,  5;  daugh 
ter  of,  born,  5  ;  removes  to  Rock  Spring 
Farm,  5,  6  ;  Abraham,  son  of,  born,  6;  buys 
farm   on   Knob   Creek,  6  ;    emigrates   to 
Indiana,  7,  8  ;  death  of  his  wife,  9;  mar 
ries  Sally  Bush  Johnston,  10;  emigrates 
to  Illinois,  20 

Lincoln,  Thomas,  son  of  President  Lin 
coln,  birth  of,  69;  death  of,  69;  accom 
panies  Mr.  Lincoln  to  Washington,  168 

Lincoln,  William  Wallace,  son  of  Presi 
dent  Lincoln,  birth  of,  60  ;  death  of,  69, 
293  ;  accompanies  Mr.  Lincoln  to  Wash 
ington,  168 

Lloyd,  John  M.,  keeps  tavern  at  Sur- 
rattsville,  Maryland,  536 

Logan,  Stephen  T.,  at  Springfield,  Illi 
nois,  52;  law  partnership  with  Lincoln, 
70;  defeated  for  Congress,  91 

"  Long  Nine,  "a  power  in  Illinois  legisla 
ture,  61 

Confederate    lieu 
atKnox- 

ville,  391  ;  retreats  toward  Virginia,  391  ; 
reports  conversation  with  Ord,  503  ;  in 
final  defense  of  Richmond,  509 

Louisiana,  State  of,  military  governor  ap 
pointed  for,  419;  election  for  members  of 
Congress,  422  ;  contest  over  slavery  clause 
in  new  constitution,  422,  423;  election  of 
State  officers  in,  425,  426  ;  adopts  new 
constitution  abolishing  slavery,  426;  sla 
very  in,  throttled  by  public  opinion,  473  ; 
ratifies  Thirteenth  Amendment,  475 

Lovejoy,  Elijah  P.,  murder  of,  46 

Lovell,  Mansfield,  Confederate  major- 
general.  evacuates  New  Orleans,  285; 
sends  men  and  guns  to  Vicksburg,  286 

Lyon,  Nathaniel,  brigadier-general 
United  States  Volunteers,  service  in  Mis 
souri,  202-204  ;  killed  at  Wilson's  Creek, 
234,  235 

Lyons,  Richard  Bickerton  Pemell, 
baron,  alterward  earl,  British  minister  at 
Washington,  instructed  to  demand  apol 
ogy  for  Trent  affair,  246 

McClellan,  George  B.,  major-general, 
general-in-chief,  United  States  army, 


, 

Longstreet,    James,     Confedera 
tenant-general,  besieges  Burnside 


orders  concerning  slaves,  221 ;  commis 
sioned  by  Governor  Dennison,  224 ;  his 
previous  career,  224  ;  quick  promotion  of, 
224  ;  successes  in  western  Virginia,  224, 
225;  ordered  to  Washington,  229;  his 
ambition,  249-251 ;  organizes  Army  of  the 
Potomac,  250,  251 ;  his  hallucinations, 
251,  252;  quarrel  with  General  Scott,  251, 

252  ;  expresses  contempt   for   the   Presi 
dent,  252  ;  answer  to  President's  inquiry, 

253  ;  illness  of,  253 ;  instructions  to  Buell, 
258-260;  unwilling  to  promote  Halleck, 
270 ;    attends    council  of  war,    289 ;    ex 
plains  plan  of  campaign  to  Stanton,  290; 
letter  to  Stanton,  292 ;  revokes  Hooker's 
authority  to  cross  lower  Potomac,  294 ; 
council   of  his  officers   votes  in  favor  of 
water  route,  295  ;  at  gathering  of  officials 
to  discuss  news  of  fight  between  Monitor 
and  Merriinac,  296 ;  occupies  abandoned 
rebel  position,  297  ;  calls  council  of  corps 
commanders,  298 ;  relieved  from  command 
of  all  troops  save  Army  of  the  Potomac, 
298 ;    arrives  at    Fortress    Monroe,    299 ; 
siege   of  Yorktown,  301 ;   his   incapacity 
and     hallucination,   302-304 ;    retreat    to 
James  River,  302;  letter  to  Stanton,  303; 
protests   against  withdrawal  of  Army  of 
the  Potomac,    309 ;    reaches  Alexandria, 
311;  suggests  leaving    Pope   to  his  fate, 
311;  telegram  to  Pope's  officers,  313  ;  in 
command  of  defenses  of  Washington,  313  ; 
follows  Lee  into  Maryland,  314;    learns 
Lee's  plans,  315  ;  battle  of  Antietam,  315  ; 
forces  under  his  command,  317,  318;  re 
moved  from  command,  319 ;  mentioned, 
328,  329 ;  adopted  by  Democrats  for  presi 
dential  candidate,   355,    438 ;    nominated 
for  President,  467 ;  letter  of  acceptance, 
468 ;  electoral  votes  for,  470 ;  resigns  from 
the  army,  470 

McClernand,  John  A.,  member  of  Con 
gress,  major-general  United  States  Vol 
unteers,  at  Springfield,  Illinois,  52 

McCulloch,  Ben,  Confederate  brigadier- 
general,  defeat  at  Pea  Ridge,  271 

McCulloch,  Hugh,  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury,  enters  Lincoln's  cabinet,  492 

McDougall,  James  A.,  member  of  Con 
gress,  United  Stades  senator,  at  Spring 
field,  Illinois,  52 

McDowell,  Irvin,  brevet  major-general 
United  States  army,  fears  junction  oi 
Johnston  and  Beauregard,  216 ;  advances 
against  Beauregard,  226;  battle  of  Bull 
Run,  July  21,  1861,  226—229;  advises 
movement  on  Manassas,  289 ;  ordered  by 
Lincoln  to  protect  Washington,  299,  305 ; 
ordered  to  form  junction  with  Shields  and 
Fremont,  306;  in  Army  of  Virginia,  310 

McLean,  John,  justice  United  States 
Supreme  Court,  vote  for,  in  Chicago  con 
vention,  149 

McNamar,  John,  engaged  to  Anne  Rut- 
ledge,  54 

Magoffin,  Beriah,  governor  of  Kentucky, 
efforts  in  behalf  of  secession,  201 

Magruder,  John   B.,   brevet  lieutenant- 


5/2 


INDEX 


colonel  United  States  army,  Confederate 
major-general,  joins  the  Confederacy,  196; 
opposes  McClellan  with  inferior  numbers, 
301 

Maine,  State  of,  admitted  as  State,  1820, 
19 

Mallory,  S.  R.,  United  States  senator, 
Confederate  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  writes 
proposition  of  armistice  dictated  by  Davis 
and  signed  by  Johnston,  521 

Malvern  Hill,  Virginia,  battle  of,  July  i, 
1862,  302 

Marcy,  R.  B.,  brevet  major-general  United 
States  army,  McClellan's  chief  of  staff, 
294 

Marshall,  Charles,  Confederate  colonel, 
present  at  Lee's  surrender,  513 

Maryland,  State  of,  secession  feeling  in, 
193 ;  arrest  and  dispersion  of  its  legisla 
ture,  199;  refuses  offer  of  compensated 
abolishment,  434;  emancipation  party  in, 
434  ;  abolishes  slavery,  435,  436  ;  slavery 
in,  throttled  by  public  opinion,  473;  rati 
fies  Thirteenth  Amendment,  474 

Mason,  James  M.,  United  States  senator, 
Confederate  commissioner  to  Europe,  in 
terview  with  John  Brown,  134  ;  goes  to 
Baltimore,  197;  capture  of,  246-249 

Matthews,  J.,  burns  Booth's  letter,  537 

Maximilian  (Ferdinand  Maximilian 
Joseph),  Archduke  of  Austria  and  Em 
peror  of  Mexico,  established  by  Napo 
leon  III  in  Mexico,  451 

Maynard,  Horace,  member  of  Congress, 
minister  to  Turkey,  telegram  about  East 
Tennessee,  259 ;  elected  to  Congress, 
419 

Meade,  George  G.,  major-general  United 
States  army,  succeeds  Hooker  in  com 
mand  of  Army  of  the  Potomac,  372 ; 
battle  of  Gettysburg,  372-374 ;  pur 
suit  of  Lee,  375,  377  ;  offers  to  give  up 
command  of  Army  of  the  Potomac,  394  ; 
continued  in  command,  395  ;  reports  sur 
render  of  Richmond,  510 ;  ordered  to  pur 
sue  Lee,  510;  pursuit  of  Lee,  511;  or 
dered  to  disregard  Sherman's  truce,  523 

Meigs,  Montgomery  C.,  brevet  major- 
general  and  quartermaster-general  United 
States  army,  at  gathering  of  officials  to 
discuss  news  of  battle  between  Monitor 
and  Merrhnac,  296 

Memphis,  Tennessee,  river  battle  at,  286 

M~rrimac,  the,  Confederate  ironclad,  bat 
tle  with  Monitor,  278-282 

Merryman,  John,  arrest  of,  199 

Minnesota,  the,  Union  steam  frigate,  in 
fight  between  Monitor  and  Merrimac, 
280 

Missouri,  State  of,  admitted  as  State,  1821, 
19;  action  concerning  secession,  201-204; 
provisional  State  government  established, 
418 ;  struggle  over  slavery,  430-434  5 
adopts  ordinance  of  emancipation,  434 ; 
resolution  in  Assembly  favoring  Lincoln's 
renomination,  444;  votes  for  Grant  in 
Baltimore  convention,  447 ;  slavery  in, 
throttled  by  public  opinion,  473 


Missouri  Compromise,  repeal  of,  94,  95, 

Mobile  Bay,  Alabama,  battle  of,  August 
5,  1864,  468,  525 

Monitor,  the,  Union  ironclad,  battle  with 
Merritnac,  279-282 

Montgomery,  Alabama,  capital  of  Con 
federacy  removed  from,  to  Richmond, 
207 

Moore,  Thomas  O.,  governor  of  Louisi 
ana,  arms  free  colored  men,  348,  349 

Morgan,  Edwin  D.,  governor  of  New 
York,  United  States  senator,  opens  Re 
publican  national  convention,  1864,  44^  J 
declines  cabinet  appointment,  492 

Morris,  Achilles,  elected  to  Illinois  legis- 
ture  in  1832,  34 

Morrison,  James  L.  D.,  desires  corr.mis- 
sionership  of  General  Land  Office,  92 

Mudd,  Samuel,  assists  Booth  and  Herold, 
542;  imprisoned,  544 

Mulligan,  James  A.,  brevet  brigadier- 
general  United  States  Volunteers,  cap 
tured  by  Price,  241 

Murfreesboro,  Tennessee,  battle  of,  De 
cember  31,  1862,  to  January  3,  1863,  380 

Napoleon  III,  colonial  ambitions  of,  211; 
establishes  Maximilian  in  Mexico,  451 

Nashville,  Tennessee,  battle  of,  Decem- 
cember  15,  16,  1864,  410 

JMeale,  T.  M.,  commands  troops  in  Black 
Hawk  War,  31,  32;  defeated  for  Illinois 
legislature,  1832,  34 

Negro  soldiers,  experiments  with,  early 
in  the  war,  348  ;  governor  of  Louisiana 
arms  free  blacks,  348,  349;  reference  to 
in  emancipation  proclamation,  349,  350 
Lincoln's  interest  in,  450 ;  attitude  of  Con 
federates  toward,  350,  351 ;  massacre  of 
at  Fort  Pillow,  351  ;  President's  conver 
sation  with  Frederick  Douglass  about  re 
taliation,  352;  Stanton's  order  regulating 
raising  of,  435 ;  Republican  national 
platform  claims  protection  of  laws  of  war 
for,  446  ;  take  part  in  second  inauguration 
of  Lincoln,  493,  494?  Jefferson  Davis's 
recommendation  concerning  slaves  in 
rebel  army,  501 ;  assist  in  restoring  order 
in  Richmond,  517;  in  Lincoln's  funeral 
procession,  546.  See  Slavery  and 
Rutancipation 

Nelson,  ^Villiam,  lieutenant-commander 
United  States  navy,  major-general  United 
States  Volunteers,  occupies  Nashville,  270 

New  Orleans,  Louisiana,  capture  of,  283- 
285  ;  Confederate  negro  regiment  in,  348, 
349;  Union  sentiment  in,  420 

New  Salem,  Illinois,  town  of,  22-26 

New  York  City,  draft  riots  in,  356,  357 ; 
funeral  honors  to  Lincoln  in,  546,  547 

Nicolay,  John  G.,  Lincoln's  private  sec 
retary,  158;  accompanies  Mr.  Lincoln  to 
Washington,  168;  in  attendance  at  Balti 
more  convention,  448,  449  ;  letter  to  Hay, 
448 

North  Carolina,  State  of,  joins  Confed 
eracy,  200,  204 ;  military  governor  ap 
pointed  for,  419 


INDEX 


573 


Offutt,  Denton,  engages  Lincoln  to  take 
flatbuat  to  New  Orleans,  21 ;  disappears 
from  New  Salem,  35 

O'Laughlin,  Michael,  in  conspiracy  to 
assassinate  Lincoln,  534 ;  imprisoned,  544 

Ord,  Edward  O.  C.,  brevet  major-gen 
eral  United  States  army,  conversation 
with  Longstreet,  503 

Owens,  Mary  S.,  Lincoln's  attentions  to, 
correspondence  with  and  proposal  ot 
marriage  to,  55-60 

Palfrey,  F.  W.,  Confederate  brigadier- 
general,  statement  about  strength  of  Army 
ot  the  Potomac.  315 

Parke,  John  G.,  brevet  major-general 
United  States  army,  in  recapture  of  Fort 
Stedm.m,  505,  506;  in  assault  at  Peters 
burg,  509 

Patterson,  Robert,  major-general  Penn 
sylvania  militia,  turns  troops  toward 
Harper's  Ferry,  209 ;  part  in  campaign 
against  Manassas,  216;  orders  concern 
ing  slaves,  220,  221 ;  failure  at  Harper's 
Ferry,  228 

Paulding,  Hiram,  rear-admiral  United 
States  navy,  burns  Norfolk  navy-yard, 
278 

Pea  Ridge,  Arkansas,  battle  of,  271 

Pemberton,  John  C.,  Confederate  lieu 
tenant-general,  surrenders  Vicksburg,  383 

Pendleton,  George  H.,  member  of  Con 
gress,  minister  to  Prussia,  nominated  for 
Vice-President,  4^7 

Pendleton,  William  N.,  Confederate 
brigadier-general,  advises  Lee  to  sur 
render,  512 

Perryville,  Kentucky,  battle  of,  October 
8,  1862,  379 

Peter,  Z.,  defeated  for  Illinois  legislature, 
1832,  34 

Petersburg,  Virginia,  operations  against, 
400-402,  507-510;  evacuation  of,  April  2, 
1865,  510 

Phelps,  John  S.,  member  of  Congress, 
appointed  military  governor  of  Arkansas, 
420 

Phelps,  J.  W.,  brigadier-general  United 
States  Volunteers,  mentioned  in  letter  of 
Lincoln,  334 ;  declared  an  outlaw  by 
Confederate  War  Department,  350 

Philippi,  West  Virginia,  battle  of,  June  3, 
1861,  214,  225 

Phillips,  Wendell,  letter  to  Cleveland 
convention,  442 

Pickens,  Francis  W.,  member  of  Con- 

§ress,  minister  to  Russia,  governor  of 
outh  Carolina,  fires  on  Star  of  Ike  lYcst, 
178 

Pickett,  George  E.,  Confederate  major- 
general,  in  battle  of  Five  Forks,  507,  508 

Pierce,  Franklin,  fourteenth  President  of 
the  United  States,  recognizes  bogus  laws 
in  Kansas,  113;  appoints  governors  for 
Kansas,  113,  114 

Pillow,  Gideon  J.,  Confederate  major- 
general,  stationed  at  Columbus,  254;  es 
capes  from  Fort  Donelson,  268 


Pinkerton,  Allen,  detective  work  of,  173 

Pittsburg  Landing,  Tennessee,  battle 
of,  April  6,  7,  1862,  272-274 

Polk,  James  K.,  eleventh  President  of 
the  United  States,  sends  treaty  of  peace 
with  Mexico  to  Senate,  79 

Pomeroy,  Samuel  C.,  United  States 
senator,  secret  circular  of,  440 

Pope,  John,  brevet  major-general  United 
States  army,  sent  to  New  Madrid,  270; 
capture  of  Island  JN'o.  10,  274;  proceeds 
to  Fort  Pillow,  274  ;  joins  Halleck,  274  ; 
assigned  to  command  Army  of  Virginia, 
306 ;  assumes  command  of  Army  of  Vir 
ginia,  310;  second  battle  of  Bull  Run, 
310,  311 ;  despatch  announcing  his  defeat, 
312;  relieved  from  command  of  Army  of 
the  Potomac,  314 

Porter,  David  D,  admiral  United  States 
navy,  commands  mortar  flotilla  in  expe 
dition  with  Farragut,  282-287;  |n  second 
expedition  to  Vicksburg,  287 ;  in  opera 
tions  about  Vicksburg,  382,  383 ;  visits 
Richmond  with  Lincoln,  517,  518 

Porterfield,  G.  A.,  Confederate  colonel, 
routed  at  Philippi,  225 

Port  Hudson,  Louisiana,  siege  and  sur 
render  of,  383,  384 

Port  Royal,  South  Carolina,  expedition 
against,  '.-45,  246 

Powell,  Lewis,  alias  Lewis  Payne,  in 
conspiracy  to  assassinate  Lincoln,  534 ; 
assigned  to  murder  Seward,  535  ;  attack 
upon  Seward,  540,  541 ;  escape  and  cap 
ture  of,  541,  542  ;  execution  of,  54^ 

Price,  Sterling,  Confederate  major-gen 
eral,  retreat  to  Springfield,  Missouri,  234 ; 
captures  Mulligan,  241 ;  retreats  toward 
Arkansas,  269;  defeat  at  Pea  Ridge,  271 

Pritchard,  Benjamin  D.,  brevet  briga 
dier-general  United  States  Volunteers, 
captures  Jefferson  Davis,  526 

Quinton,  R.,  defeated  for  Illinois  legisla 
ture,  1832,  34 

Rathbone,  Henry  R.,  brevet  colonel 
United  States  army,  attends  Ford's  The 
ater  with  Mrs.  Lincoln  and  Mi>s  Harris, 
536 ;  wounded  by  Booth,  538,  539 

Raymond,  Henry  J.,  member  of  Con 
gress,  letter  to  Lincoln,  462,  463 ;  visits 
Washington,  463 

Reconstruction,  in  West  Virginia" and 
Missouri,  418,  419;  Lincoln's  theory  c., 
419 ;  in  Louisiana,  420-426 ;  in  Arkansas, 
426,  427;  in  Tennessee,  428,  429;  oppo 
sition  in  Congress  to  Lincoln's  action 
concerning,  454 ;  Henry  Winter  Davis's 
bill  prescribing  method  of,  454;  Lincoln's 
proclamation  of,  July  8,  1864,  456  5  Wade- 
Davis  manifesto,  456,  457 

Republican  Party,  formation  of,  102,  103  ; 
nominates  Fremont  and  Dayton,  1856, 
103,  104;  national  convention  of,  1860, 
144-151;  candidates  in  1860,  152;  cam 
paign  of,  1860,  153-160;  Fremont  faction 
denounces  Lincoln's  attitude  on  slavery, 


574 


INDEX 


438 ;  the  Chase  faction,  439-441  ;  national 
convention  of,  1864,  446-449 ;  gloomy 
prospects  of,  462-466;  success  in  elec 
tions  of,  1864,  469,  470 

Retaliation,  rebel  threats  of,  350,  351 ; 
cabinet  action  on  Fort  Pillow  massacre, 
352 ;  conversation  between  Lincoln  and 
Frederick  Douglass  about,  352 

Reynolds,  John,  governor  of  Illinois, 
issues  call  for  volunteers  for  Black  Hawk 
War,  31,  32 

Richmond,  Virginia,  becomes  capital  of 
Confederate  States,  207 ;  panic  in,  at  ru 
mors  of  evacuation,  481 ;  high  prices  in, 
481;  excitement  created  by  Blair's  visits, 
481,  482;  alarm  at  Grant's  advance,  500; 
surrender  of,  April  3,  1865,  510;  burning 
of,  515,  516 

Rich  Mountain,  Virginia,  battle  of,  July 
ii,  1861,  225 

Riney,  Zachariah,  teacher  of  President 
Lincoln,  6 

Roanoke,  the,  Union  steam  frigate,  in 
fight  between  Monitor  and  Merrimac, 
280 

Robinson,  E.,  defeated  for  Illinois  legisla 
ture,  1832,  34 

Rodgers,  John,  rear-admiral  United 
States  navy,  takes  part  in  Port  Royal 
expedition,  245,  246 

Romine,  Gideon,  merchant  at  Gentry- 
ville,  9 

Rosecrans,  William  S.,  brevet  major- 
general  United  States  army,  success  at 
Rich  Mountain,  225 ;  succeeds  Buell  in 
Kentucky,  380;  battle  of  Murfreesboro, 
380;  luka  and  Corinth,  380;  drives  Bragg 
to  Chattanooga,  385  ;  Chattanooga  and 
Chickamauga,  386-388 ;  relieved  from 
command,  388,  389 ;  dilatory  movements 
delay  reconstruction  in  Tennessee,  428 

Russell,  Lord  John,  British  minister  for 
foreign  affairs,  interview  with  Charles 
Francis  Adams,  211 

Rutledge,  Anne,  engagement  to  Lincoln, 
54  ;  death  of,  54 

Savannah,  Georgia,  occupied  by  Sherman, 
December  21,  1864,  412 

Schofield,  J.  M.,  brevet  major-general, 
general-in-chief,  United  States  army, 
ordered  to  join  Sherman,  414 ;  joins  Sher 
man,  417 

Schurz,  Carl,  major-general  United  States 
Volunteers,  United  States  senator,  Secre 
tary  of  the  Interior,  asks  permission  to 
take  part  in  presidental  campaign,  444 

Scott,  Dred,  case  of,  108,  109 

Scott,  Robert  E.,  tendered  cabinet  ap 
pointment,  164 

Scott,  Winfield, lieutenant-general  United 
States  army,  warning  to  Lincoln  about 
plot  in  Baltimore,  172;  charged  with 
safety  of  Washington,  172;  attempt  to 
reinforce  Anderson,  178;  advises  evacu 
ation  of  Sumter,  183  ;  orders  Washington 
prepared  for  a  siege,  194;  report  to  Presi 
dent  Lincoln,  194,  195 ;  offers  Lee  com 


mand  of  seventy-five  regiments,  196; 
orders  Lyon  to  St.  Louis,  202 ;  loyalty  of, 
208;  occupies  Cairo,  Illinois,  210;  mili 
tary  problem  before,  210;  plan  of  cam 
paign,  215,  216,  231,  232;  refuses  to 
credit  news  of  defeat  at  Bull  Run,  228, 
229 ;  welcomes  McClellan  to  Washington, 
250;  quarrel  with  McClellan,  251,  252; 
retirement  of,  251-253;  rank  as  lieutenant- 
general,  393  ;  attends  Lincoln's  funeral  in 
New  York,  547 

Seaton,  William  W.,  mayor  of  Wash 
ington,  approves  Lincoln's  bill  abolishing 
slavery  in  District  of  Columbia,  87 

Secession,  South  Carolina,  Florida,  Mis 
sissippi,  Alabama,  Georgia,  Louisiana, 
and  Texas  join  the  movement,  175,  176; 
action  of  central  cabal,  177;  sentiment  in 
Maryland,  193,  194;  Virginia  passes  ordi 
nance  of,  194  ;  Tennessee,  North  Caro 
lina,  and  Arkansas  join  the  movement, 
200;  sentiment  in  Delaware,  201;  in 
Kentucky,  201 ;  in  Missouri,  201-204; 
numerical  strength  of,  204.  See  Confed 
erate  States  of  A  merica 

Seddon,  James  A.,  member  of  Congress, 
Confederate  Secretary  of  War,  resigna 
tion  of,  501 

Sedgwick,  John,  major-general  United 
States  Volunteers,  crosses  Rappahannock 
and  takes  Fredericksburg,  368,  369 

Seven  Days'  Battles,  302,  306,  307 

Seward,  Augustus  H.,  brevet  colonel 
United  States  army,  stabbed  by  Powell, 
alias  Payne,  541 

Seward,  Frederick  W.,  Assistant  Secre 
tary  of  State,  visits  Lincoln  in  Philadel 
phia,  172;  wounded  by  Powell,  alias 
Payne,  540,  541 

Seward,  William  H.,  United  States  sena 
tor,  Secretary  of  State,  desires  reelection 
of  Douglas  to  United  States  Senate,  125; 
candidate  for  presidential  nomination, 

1860,  144 ;  votes  for,  in  Chicago  conven 
tion,   149-151;    accepts   cabinet   appoint 
ment,    163 ;     transmits   offers  of  cabinet 
appointments,    164;    suggestions  to  Lin 
coln  about  journey  to  Washington,  168; 
warning  to  Lincoln  about  plot  in   Balti 
more,  172,  173;  meets  Lincoln  at  railway 
station   in  Washington,    174;    appointed 
Secretary  of  State,  182;  reply  to  Confed 
erate  commissioners,  183;  reply  to  Judge 
Campbell,  183;  memorandum  of  April  i, 

1861,  184-187;  opinion  of  Lincoln,   187; 
despatch  of  May  21,  211;  friendship  for 
Lord  Lyons,  247 ;  despatch  in  Trent  affair, 
249 ;    at  gathering  of  officials  to  discuss 
news   of  Monitor  and    Mcrrimac,    296; 
goes  to  New  York  with  President's  letter, 
307;  Lincoln  tells  him  of  coming  emanci 
pation  proclamation,  332 ;  suggests  post 
ponement  of  emancipation  proclamation, 
332  ;  attitude  toward  the  French  in  Mexico, 
451,  452;   agrees  with  President  against 
making  proffers  of  peace  to  Davis,  463; 
proclaims  ratification  ofThirteenth  Amend 
ment,  475  ;  goes  to  Hampton  Roads,  483; 


INDEX 


575 


relations  with  Montgomery  Blair,  488 ; 
plot  to  murder,  535  ;  attacked  by  Powell, 
alias  Payne,  540,  541 

Seymour,  Horatio,  governor  of  New 
York,  opposition  to  the  draft,  355-357 ; 
correspondence  with  Lincoln,  356;  noti 
fies  McClellan  of  his  nomination,  468 

Shepley,  G.  F.,  brigadier-general  United 
States  Volunteers,  military  governor  of 
Louisiana,  orders  election  lor  members  of 
Congress,  422 ;  orders  registration  of 
loyal  voters,  422,  423 

Sheridan,  Philip  H.,  lieutenant-general, 
general-in-chief.  United  States  army, 
operations  in  Shenandoah  valley,  403, 
404 ;  succeeds  McClellan,  470 ;  in  Shen 
andoah  valley,  502 ;  reaches  City  Point, 
506  ;  advance  to  Five  Forks,  507  ;  reports 
situation  to  Grant,  507 ;  battle  of  Five 
Forks,  508 ;  ordered  to  get  on  Lee's  line 
of  retreat,  509,  510;  despatch  to  Grant, 
511;  captures  Appomattox  Station,  512; 
despatch  to  Grant,  512 

Sherman,  John,  member  of  Congress, 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  United  States 
senator,  candidate  for  Speaker  of  the 
House  of  Representatives,  141 

Sherman,  William  Tecumseh,  lieuten 
ant-general,  general-in-chief  United  States 
army.sentto  Nashville,  254 ;  succeeds  An 
derson,  254  ;  interview  with  Cameron, 255 ; 
asks  to  be  relieved,  255 ;  in  operations 
about  Vicksburg,  381.  382 ;  reaches  Chat 
tanooga,  389 ;  in  battle  of  Chattanooga, 
390,  391 ;  conference  with  Grant,  395 ; 
master  in  the  West,  395 ;  Meridian  cam 
paign,  405,  406 ;  concentrates  troops  at 
Chattanooga,  406 ;  march  on  Atlanta, 
408,  468 ;  truce  with  Hood,  408 ;  divides 
his  army,  409;  march  to  the  sea,  410- 
412;  telegram  to  President  Lincoln,  412; 
proposes  to  march  through  the  Carolinas, 
414;  from  Savannah  to  Goldsboro,  414- 
417;  visit  to  Grant,  417;  march  north 
ward,  502;  visit  to  Lincoln  and  Grant, 
506 ;  admiration  for  Grant  and  respect 
for  Lee,  520;  enters  Raleigh,  521;  re 
ceives  communication  from  Johnston, 
521 :  meetings  with  Johnston,  521,  522 ; 
agreement  between  them,  522 ;  agree 
ment  disapproved  at  Washington,  523 ; 
report  to  Grant,  523,  524  ;  receives  John 
ston's  surrender,  524;  effect  of  his  march 
through  the  South,  524 ;  sent  against  E. 
Kirby  Smith,  526 ;  soldiers  of,  in  grand 
review,  528 

Shields,  James,  United  States  senator, 
brigadier-general  United  States  Volun 
teers,  at  Springfield,  Illinois,  52 ;  auditor 
of  Illinois,  65;  challenges  Lincoln  to  a 
duel,  66-68 ;  ordered  to  form  junction 
with  McDowell  and  Fremont,  306 

Short,  James,  buys  Lincoln's  surveying 
instruments  and  restores  them  to  him,  36 

Simpson,  M.,  Bishop  of  the  Methodist 
Church,  oration  at  Lincoln's  funeral,  548 

Slavery,  agitation  in  Illinois,  45,  46;  Lin 
coln-Stone  protest,  47;  Lincoln's  bill  to 


abolish,  in  District  of  Columbia,  85-87  ; 
repeal  of  Missouri  Compromise,  94,  95 ; 
Peoria  debate  of  Lincoln  and  Douglas, 
96-98 ;  Lincoln's  Chicago  banquet  speech, 
106,  107;  Dred  Scott  case,  108-112;  pro- 
slavery  reaction,  113;  slavery  agitation 
in  Kansas,  113-117;  Lincoln  s  "House 
divided  against  itself"  speech,  119,  120, 
127,  128;  Lincoln-Douglas  joint  debate, 
121-125;  John  Brown  raid,  134,  135; 
Lincoln's  speeches  in  Kansas  and  the 
East,  136^-140;  pro-slavery  demands  of 
Democratic  leaders,  141,  142;  attitude  of 
political  parties  upon,  in  i8Co,  152,  153; 
"  corner-stone  "  theory  of  the  Confederate 
States,  179  ;  dream  of  the  conspirators, 
197,  204  ;  dread  of  slave  insurrections  in 
the  South,  220,  221 ;  action  of  Union 
commanders  about,  2.>o-223;  Fremont's 
proclamation,  236-238 ;  Lincoln  to  Brown 
ing  about  Fremont's  proclamation,  238- 
240;  President's  interview  with  border 
State  delegations,  257,  258,  324, 325  ;  refer 
ences  to,  in  Cameron's  report,  320;  in 
Lincoln's  message  of  December  3,  1861, 
321,  322;  Delaware  offered  compensated 
abolishment,  322,  323 ;  Lincoln's  special 
message  to  Congress,  March  6,  1862,  323, 
324;  President's  letter  to  McDougall,  324  ; 
Congress  passes  bill  for  compensated 
emancipation  in  District  of  Columbia, 
325,  326;  bill  in  Congress  to  aid  emanci 
pation  in  Delaware,  Maryland,  Virginia, 
Kentucky,  Tennessee,  and  Missouri, 
326;  Lincoln  revokes  Hunter's  order, 
327,  328 ;  measures  relating  to,  in  Con 
gress,  1862,  329 ;  President's  second  in 
terview  with  border  State  delegations, 
329-331  ;  Lincoln  reads  first  draft  of 
emancipation  proclamation  to  cabinet, 
331,  332;  President's  interview  with 
Chicago  clergymen,  337-339;  President 
issues  preliminary  emancipation  procla 
mation,  339-341 ;  annual  message  of  De 
cember  i,  1862,  on,  341,  342;  President 
issues  final  emancipation  proclamation, 
342-346 ;  President's  views  on,  346,  347  ; 
arming  of  negro  soldiers,  348-350;  in 
structions  from  War  Department  about 
slaves,  3^9;  contest  over  slavery  clause  in 
new  Louisiana  constitution,  423;  slavery 
abolished  in  Louisiana.  426;  abolished  in 
Arkansas,  427;  abolished  in  Tennessee, 
429 ;  abolished  in  Missouri,  434 ;  abol 
ished  in  Maryland,  435,  436;  attitude  of 
Democratic  party  on,  437,  438;  Republi 
can  national  platform  favors  constitutional 
amendment  abolishing,  446 ;  fugitive- 
slave  law  repealed,  457 ;  constitutional 
amendment  prohibiting,  in  United  States, 
471-476 ;  public  opinion  on,  in  certain 
States,  473;  two  constitutional  amend 
ments  offered  during  Lincoln's  term,  475, 
476 ;  Lincoln's  draft  of  joint  resolution 
offering  South  $400,000,000,  493  ;  decline 
in  value  of  slave  property  in  the  South, 
501;  effect  on  Lincoln's  character,  551. 
See  Emancipation  and  Negro  soldiers 


576 


INDEX 


Slidell,  John,  minister  to  Mexico,  United 
States  senator,  Confederate  commissioner 
to  Europe,  capture  of,  246—249;  last  in 
structions  from  Confederate  Secretary  of 
State  to,  501,  502 

Smith,  Caleb  B.,  member  of  Congress, 
Secretary  of  the  Interior,  judge  United 
States  District  Court,  appointed  Secretary 
of  the  Interior,  18^  ;  signs  cabinet  protest, 
311,  312 

Smith,  E.  Kirby,  Confederate  general, 
commands  forces  west  of  the  Mississippi, 
525  ;  surrender  of,  526,  527 

Smith,  Melancton,  rear-admiral  United 
States  navy,  at  gathering  of  officials  to 
discuss  fight  between  Monitor  and  Mer- 
rimac,  296 

Smith,  'William  F.,  brevet  major-general 
United  States  army,  service  at  Chatta 
nooga,  389 

Spain,  joint  expedition  to  Mexico,  451 

Spangler,  Edward,  imprisoned  for  com 
plicity  in  Hooth's  plot,  544 

Speed,  James,  Attorney-General,  ap 
pointed  Attorney-General,  491 

Speed,  Joshua  F.,  intimacy  with  Lincoln, 
53  ;  Lincoln's  letters  to,  64,  65,  68  ;  mar 
riage,  65 

Spottsylvania,  Virginia,  battle  of,  May  8- 
19,  1864,  398,  399 

Springfield,  Illinois,  its  ambition,  26; 
hvst  newspaper,  26  ;  becomes  capital  of 
Illinois,  45,  52;  in  1837-39,  53'  revival 
of  business  in,  61  ;  society  in,  62  ;  Lin 
coln's  speech  of  farewell  at,  169;  funeral 
honors  to  Lincoln  in,  547,  548 

Stanley,  Edward,  member  of  Congress, 
appointed  militarygovernorof  North  Caro 
lina,  420 

Stanton,  Edwin  M.,  Attorney-General, 
Secretary  of  War,  succeeds  Cameron  as 
Secretary  of  War,  289;  his  efficiency, 
289,  290;  interview  with  the  President, 
293,  294;  at  gathering  of  officials  to  dis 
cuss  news  of  Monitor  and  Mcrrhnac,  296; 
conveys  President's  reply  to  McClellan's 
plan  of  campaign,  298 ;  indignation  at 
McClellan,  311;  draws  up  and  signs 
memorandum  of  protest  against  continu 
ing  McCleilan  in  command,  311 ;  instruc 
tion  about  slaves,  349  ;  faith  in  Hooker, 
370;  anxiety  for  Lincoln  during  Early's 
raid,  403 ;  order  regulating  raising  of 
colored  troops,  435  ;  orders  suppression 
of  two  New  York  newspapers  and  arrest 
of  their  editors,  453,  454 ;  agrees  with 
President  against  making  proffers  of 
peace  to  Davis,  463  ;  relations  with  Mont 
gomery  Blair,  488;  sends  Halleck's  letter 
to  President,  488 ;  shows  Lincoln  Grant's 
despatch  transmitting  Lee's  overtures.  503; 
disapproves  Sherman's  agreement  with 
Johnston,  523;  at  Lincoln's  death-bed,  540 

Star  of  the  West,  merchant  vessel,  un 
successful  attempt  to  reinforce  Fort  Sum- 
ter,  178 

Steele,  Frederick,  brevet  major-general 
United  States  army,  marches  from  Helena 


to  Little  Rock,  Arkansas,  427 ;  assists  re 
construction  in  Arkansas,  427 

Stephens,  Alexander  H.,  member  of 
Congress,  Confederate  Vice-President, 
correspondence  with  Lincoln,  165,  166 ; 
elected  Vice-President  Confederate  States 
of  America,  179;  "corner-stone"  theory, 
179  ;  signs  military  league,  197  ;  appointed 
peace  commissioner,  482 ;  at  Hampton 
Roads  conference,  482-485 

Stevens,  Thaddeus,  member  of  Congress, 
criticism  of  joint  resolution  offering  com 
pensated  emancipation,  325 

St.  Lawrence,  the,  in  fight  between 
Monitor  and  Merritnac,  280 

Stone,  Charles  P.,  brigadier-general 
United  States  Volunteers,  report  about 
danger  to  Lincoln  in  Baltimore,  172,  173 

Stone,  Dan,  member  of  Illinois  legislature, 
protest  with  Lincoln  against  resolutions 
on  slavery,  47 

Stone,  Dr.  Robert  K.,  at  Lincoln's  death 
bed,  539,  540 

Stringham,  Silas  H.  rear-admiral  United 
States  navy,  commands  Hatteras  expe 
dition,  245 

Stuart,  John  T.,  major  Illinois  Volunteers, 
member  of  Congress,  reenlists  as  private 
in  Black  Hawk  War,  33;  elected  to  Illi 
nois  legislature  in  1832,  34 ;  reflected  in 
1834,  43;  encourages  Lincoln  to  study 
law,  44 ;  at  Springfield,  Illinois,  52; 
elected  to  Congress,  69,  70 

Surratt,  John  H.,  in  conspiracy  to  assas 
sinate  Lincoln,  534 ;  deposits  arms  in 
tavern  at  Surrattsville,  536;  escape  to 
Canada,  subsequent  capture  and  trial,  544 

Surratt,  Mrs.  Mary  E.,  in  conspiracy  to 
assassinate  Lincoln,  534  ;  visits  tavern  at 
Surratlsville,  536;  fate  of,  541,  542,  544 

Swaney,  teacher  of  President  Lincoln,  12 

Swett,  Leonard,  favors  Holt  for  Vice- 
President,  448 

Taney,  Roger  B.,  chief  justice  of  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  opin 
ion  in  Dred  Scott  case,  109;  action  in 
Merryman  case,  199,  200;  death  of,  490 

Taylor,  E.  D.,  elected  to  Illinois  legisla 
ture  in  1832,  34 

Taylor,  Richard,  Confederate  lieutenant- 
general,  surrenders  to  Canby,  525,  527 

Taylor,  Zachary,  twelfth  President  of  the 
United  States,  nominated  for  President, 
80,  81 ;  elected  President,  87 

Tennessee,  the,  Confederate  ram,  in  bat 
tle  of  Mobile  Bay,  525 

Tennessee,  State  of,  joins  Confederacy, 
200,  204 ;  military  governor  appointed  for, 
419;  secession  usurpation  in,  420;  delay 
of  reconstruction  in,  428;  organization  of 
State  government  and  abolishment  of  sla 
very,  429;  public  opinion  in,  regarding 
slavery,  473;  ratifies  Thirteenth  Amend 
ment,  475 

Terry,  Alfred  H.,  brevet  major-general 
United  States  army,  communicates  with 
Sherman,  416 


INDEX 


577 


Texas,  State  of,  ratifies  Thirteenth  Amend 
ment.  475 

Thatcher,  Henry  K.,  rear-admiral  United 
States  navy,  receives  surrender  of  Far- 
rand,  525 

Thirteenth  Amendment,  joint  resolu 
tion  proposing,  471-475;  ratification  of, 

Thomas,  George  H.,  major-general 
United  States  army,  ordered  to  oppose 
Zollicoffer,  254;  victory  over  ZolhcofVer, 
265 ;  at  battle  of  Chickamauga,  387  ;  suc 
ceeds  Rosecrans  at  Chattanooga,  389 ;  in 
battle  of  Chattanooga,  390,  391 ;  sent  by 
Sherman  to  defend  Tennessee,  409; 
Franklin  and  Nashville,  410;  threatens 
Confederate  communications  from  Ten 
nessee,  502 

Thompson,  Jacob,  member  of  Congress, 
Secretary  of  the  I  nterior,  agent  of  Con 
federate  government  in  Canada,  361 ;  his 
visionary  plans,  361,  362 ;  account  at 
Montreal  Bank,  544 

Thompson,  Samuel,  colonel  Illinois  Vol 
unteers,  commands  regiment  in  Black 
Hawk  War,  32 

Tod,  David,  minister  to  Brazil,  governor 
of  Ohio,  declines  nomination  for  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury,  457 

Todd,  Mary,  see  Lincoln,  Mary  Todd 

Totten,  Joseph  G.,  brevet  major-general 
United  States  army,  at  gathering  of  offi 
cials  to  discuss  news  of  fight  of  Monitor 
and  Merrimac,  296 

Treat,  Samuel  H.,  United  States  district 
judg'1,  at  Springfield,  Illinois,  52 

Trent  Brothers,  buy  store  ot  Lincoln  and 
Berry,  36 

Trent,  the,  British  mail-steamer,  overhauled 
by  the  San  Jachtto,  246 

Trumbull,  Lyman,  member  of  Congress, 
United  States  senator,  at  Springfield, 
Illinois,  52;  elected  to  United  States 
Senate,  1855,  100 

Turnham,  David,  lends  Lincoln  "Re 
vised  Statutes  of  Indiana,"  14 

Usher,  John  P.,  Secretary  of  the  Trea 
sury,  resigns  from  cabinet,  492 

Vallandigham,  Clement  L.,  member  of 
Congress,  interview  with  John  Brown, 
134  ;  arrest  and  banishment  of,  358  ;  head 
of  Knights  of  Golden  Circle,  etc.,  360, 
361;  at  Democratic  national  convention, 
467. 468 

Van  Bergen,  sues  Lincoln  for  debt,  36,  41 

Vandalia,  Illinois  removal  of  State  capital 
from,  to  Springfield,  45.  52 

Van  Dorn,  Earl,  Confederate  mnjor- 
general,  defeat  at  Pea  Ridge,  271 

Varuna,  the,  sunk  in  expedition  against 
New  Orleans,  285 

Vicksburg,  Mississippi,  fortifications  of, 
287;  surrender  of,  July  4,  1863,  376,  383; 
situation  of  381  ;  operations  against,  381- 

38' 
Victoria,  Queen  of  Great  Britain  and  Ire 


land,    proclamation    of   neutrality,    211 ; 

kindly  feelings  toward  United  States,  247 
Vienna  Station,  ambush  at,  214 
Virginia,   State   of,    passes    ordinance    of 

secession,  194 ;  in  the  Confederacy,  204 ; 

ratifies  Thirteenth  Amendment,  475 

Wade,  Benjamin  F.,  United  States  sena 
tor,  signs  Wade-Davis  manifesto,  456 

Walker,  Leroy  Pope,  Confederate  Sec 
retary  of  War  and  brigadier-general, 
speech  at  Montgomery,  197 

Walker,  Robert  J.,  United  States  sena 
tor,  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  appointed 
governor  of  Kansas,  114;  letter  to  Bu 
chanan,  114,  115;  resigns,  117 

Warren,  Gouverneur  K.,  brevet  major- 
general  United  States  army,  attacked  by 
Lee,  507 

Washburne,  Elihu  B.,  member  of  Con 
gress,  minister  to  Fiance,  meets  Lincoln 
at  railway  station  in  Washington,  174 

Washington  City,  cutoff  from  the  North, 
194-197;  communication  restored,  197; 
fortifications  of,  208,  209;  threatened  by 
Early,  403  ;  grand  review  of  Union  army 
in,  527-529 

Washington,  George,  first  President  of 
the  United  States,  rank  of  lieutenant- 
general,  393;  size  of  his  armies  compared 
with  Lee's,  574;  his  place  in  United 
States  history,  555 

Weitzel,  Godfrey,  brevet  major-general 
United  Slates  army,  receives  surrender 
of  Richmond,  510;  sets  about  work  of 
relief,  516 

Welles,  Gideon,  Secretary  of  the  Navy, 
appointed  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  182; 
approves  course  of  Captain  Wilkes,  246; 
at  gathering  of  officials  to  discuss  news  of 
fight  between  Monitor  and  Merrimac, 
296;  refuses  to  sign  cabinet  protest,  311, 
312;  Lincoln  tells  him  of  coming  emanci 
pation  proclamation,  332 

West  Virginia,  State  of,  formation  of,  roo, 
201  ;  true  to  the  Union,  204  ;  effect  on,  of 
McClellan's  campaign,  225;  admission 
to  the  Union,  418;  slavery  in  throttled  by 
public  opinion,  473 

Whig  Party,  first  national  convention  of, 
?8 ;  nominates  Henry  Clay,  28  ;  conven 
tion  of  i£6o,  143,  144 

White,  Albert  S.,  member  of  Congress, 
United  States  senator,  judge  of  District 
Court  of  Indiana,  reports  bill  to  aid  eman 
cipation  in  Delaware,  Mary  land,  Virginia, 
Kentucky,  Tennessee,  and  Missouri, 
326  ' 

Whitesides,  Samuel,  general  Illinois 
Volunteers,  reenlists  as  private  in  Black 
Hnwk  War.  33 

Wide  Awakes,  origin  and  campaign 
work  of,  me,  1=6 

Wilderness,  Virginia,  battle  of,  May  5, 
6,  1864,  398 

Wilkes,  Charles,  rear-admiral  United 
States  navy,  capture  of  the  Trent,  246- 
249 


578 


INDEX 


'Wilmington,  North  Carolina,  occupation 
of,  February  22,  1865,  525 

Wilson,  James  H.,  brevet  major-general 
United  States  army,  cavalry  raid,  and 
defeat  of  Forrest,  524,  525 

"Wilson's  Creek,  Missouri,  battle  of,  Au 
gust  10,  1861,  235 

Wise,  Henry  A.,  minister  to  Brazil; 
governor  of  Virginia,  Confederate  briga 
dier-general,  desires  Douglas's  reelection 
to  United  States  Senate,  126 ;  interview 
with  John  Brown,  134 

Worden,  John  L.,  rear-admiral  United 
States  navy,  commands  the  Monitor,  282 

Wright,  Horatio  G.,  brevet  major-gen 
eral  United  States  army,  sent  to  Wash 
ington,  403  ;  in  recapture  of  Fort  Sted- 


man,  505,  506 ;  in  assault  at  Petersburg. 
508,  509 

Yates,  Richard,  member  of  Congress, 
governor  of  Illinois,  United  States  sena 
tor,  Lincoln  advocates  his  reelection,  96; 
commissions  Grant,  265 ;  appoints  J.  F. 
Jaquess  colonel  of  volunteer  regiment, 
461 

Yorktown,  Virginia,  siege  of,  April  5  to 
May  3,  1862,  301 

Zollicoffer,  Felix  K.,  member  of  Con 
gress,  Confederate  brigadier-general,  in 
eastern  Kentucky,  254;  defeated  by 
Thomas,  265 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
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